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THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

THE FREAKS OF

MAYFAIR

BY E. F. BENSON

AUTHOR OF "DODO," 6?c. &c. 6fc.
WITH EIGHT ILLUSTRATIONS BY

GEORGE PLANK

T. N. FOULIS, PUBLISHER

LONDON, EDINBURGH, & BOSTON

This work is published by

T. N. FOULIS

LONDON : 91 Great Russell Street, W.C.

EDINBURGH : 15 Frederick Street

And may also be ordered through the following agencies

where the work may be examined

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CANADA : The Oxford University Press
25 Richmond Street West, Toronto

First Edition p^lblished November
nineteen hundred and sixteen

Printed in Scotland by
R. & R. CLARK, LTD., Edinburgh

DEDICATED

FRANK EYES

AND

KINDLY EARS

THE LIST OF CONTENTS

I. THE COMPLEAT SNOBS . . page 15
II. AUNT GEORGIE 33

III. QUACK-QUACK 51

IV. THE POISON OF ASPS .... 73
V. THE SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE . 87

VI. THE ETERNALLY UNCOMPROMISED 109
VII. THE GRIZZLY KITTENS . . . 127

VIII. CLIMBERS:

1. THE HORIZONTAL . . . 145

IX. CLIMBERS:

2. THE PERPENDICULAR . . 163

X. THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR . . . 185

XI. "SING FOR YOUR DINNER" , ~ .201

XII. THE PRAISERS OF PAST TIME . . 219

THE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

reproduced from drawings by
GEORGE PLANK

1. THE COMPLEAT SNOBS . . . Frontispiece

2. AUNT GEORGIE .... page 40

3. QUACK-QUACK 56

4. POISON OF ASPS 73

5. THE SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE . 104

6. THE GRIZZLY KITTENS . . . .136

7. CLIMBERS: I. THE HORIZONTAL. . 152

8. CLIMBERS: II. THE PERPENDICULAR 168

THECOMPLEAT SNOBS
CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER ONE
THECOMPLEATSNOBS

THERE IS NO MORE JOYOUS

couple in all Mayfair than Sir Louis Marigold,
Bart, M. P., and Lady Mary Marigold, and whe-
ther they are at Marigold Park, Bucks, or at
Homburg, or in their spacious residence in Ber-
keley Square, their lives form one unbroken
round of pomp and successful achievement.
She was the daughter of an obscure Irish Earl,
and when she married her husband was still hard
at work building up the business of Marigold &
Sons. Those were strenuous days, and the pro-
fession of money-getting made it necessary for
him toindulgehissnobbishnessonlyasahobby.
But she, like the good wife she has always been
to him, took care of his hobby, as of a stamp-
collection, and constantly enriched it with spe-
cimens of her own acquisition, being a snob of
purest ray serene herself. She is the undoubted
descendant of Arrahmedear, king of Donegal,
in which salubrious county her brother, the
present Earl, is steadilydrinking himself to death
in the intervals of farming his fifty-acre estate.
When he has succeeded in completely poison-
inghimselfwith whisky, she will become Count-
ess of Ballamuck herself,since the title descends,
15

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

in default of male heirs, in the female line, and
there will be what I hope it is not irreverent to
call high old times in Berkeley Square andMari-
gold Park.

When first they married her husband always
playfully called her 'The Princess' (being the
lineal descendant of that remarkable monarch
King Arrahmedear), and what began in play
soon sobered into a habit. But when she is a
real contemporary peeress, it is probable that he
will drop the appellation derived from legend-
ary kings, and call her Countess. There will be
no hint of badinage about that : Countess she
will be, and the papers will be full of little para-
graphs about the movements of Sir Louis Mari-
gold, Bart., M.P., and the Countess of Balla-
muck. . . . There is just the faintest suggestion
of Ouida-ismand impropriety which gives such
announcements a peculiar relish.

Now there is no snob so profound as the
well-born snob, especially in the female line.
She (in this case Lady Mary Marigold) knows
about it from the inside, and is aware of all it
means to be the daughter of earls, not to men-
tionkings. Her husband therefore, having been
born of an obscure commercial family, was not
originally so gifted as his wife, but by industry

THE COMPLEAT SNOBS

and study he has now practically caught her up,
and they run together in an amicable rose-col-
oureddead-heat. Likeallthefinerendowments,
as that of poetry, pure snobbishness is born not
acquired, and lowly as was his birth, the fairy-
godmother who visited his infant cradle brought
this golden gift with her, and with the same in-
stinct for what is worth having that has always
distinguished him, he did not squander or dissi-
pate her bounty, but hoarded and polished and
perfected it. When he was quite a little boy he
used to dream about marquises, and, if a feverish
cold added a touch of daring to his slumbers,
about kings and queens ; now with the reward
thatwaits upon childhood's aspirations, ithasall
come true. Already his son (the first-born of the
future countess) has married the Lady Some-
thing Something, daughter of a marquis, and
there are great hopes about a widowed Bishop
for his daughter.

It might seem that this episcopal anchor-
age was but a poor fulfilment of the prayers of
her papa, but any who think that can form no
adequate impression of the completeness of Sir
Louis's snobbishness. For the real snob is he
who worships success and distinction whether
that success is hall-marked with coronets, weal th,
17 B

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

or gaiters. To achieve success in the eyes of the
world is to him the greatest of human accom-
plishments, and to be acquainted, or better still,
connected with those who have done so, and
best of all to be identified with them, constitutes
the joy of life. Sir Louis has a profound ad-
miration for his wife, his son, his son's wife, but
he perhaps reserves his levels of highest com-
placency for himself, and with all his busy loving
glances at the dazzling objects round him, he
never really diverts his gaze from his own career.
It is for his own success in life that he reserves
his most sincere respect.

While his wife and he are thus in every sense
perfect snobs, as far as perfection can be attained
in this tentative world, they, like all other pro-
fessors in great branches of knowledge, special-
ize in one particular department, and theirs is
Birth. It is, of course, a great joy to Lady Mary
M arigold to see the wife of a Cabinet M inister, of
an African explorer, of an ambassador pass out
of her dining-room at the conclusion of dinner,
while she stands by the door and, shaking an
admonitory fingerat her husband till her brace-
lets rattle, says, ' Now, Sir Baronet, don't be too
long' ; it is a joy also to him to move to the other
end of the table between the ambassador and

THE COMPLEAT SNOBS

the Cabinet Minister and say, ' My lady won't
grudge your Excellency time to drink another
glass of port and have a small cigar ' ; but most of
all they love the hour when these manoeuvres are
enacted with members of the aristocracy, or, as
has happened several times in this last year or
two (for they are really among the tree-tops), with
those for whom, to the exclusion of themselves
and other guests, finger-bowls are provided. On
these occasions, that is when Royalty is present,
a sort of seizure is liable to come upon them, and
for a minute or two one or other sinks back in
his chair in a dazed condition consequent upon
so much happiness. A foretaste of the bliss of
Nirvana is theirs, and Sir Louis's eyes have
been known to fill with happy, happy tears on
seeing a Prince show my lady how to eat a cherry
backwards, stalk first.

In the early days of their marriage, when, as
Mr. Marigold, he came back tired with his day's
work to his modest dwelling in Oakley Street,
Birth was his hobby, and instead of relaxing his
tired brain over the perusal of trashy novels or
the play ingof fruitless games of patience, like so
many who have no sense of the value of time, he
and she would sit tranquilly, one on each side of
the fireplace, with a reading-lamp conveniently
19

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

placed between them, and dive into the sunlit
waters of the Peerage. One happy Christmas
Day they found that the present of each to the
other was a copy of this beautiful book, and after
thisdeliciouscoincidence,theykeptthepleasant
custom up, and always presented each other with
Peerages at Christmas, so that now they have
both of them a complete set for the last twenty-
three years. Their son, Oswald Owen Vivian
Lancelot, was true to parental tradition and ten-
dency, and rapturous was the day when, at the
age of fourteen, after hours of careful work, he
gave his mother on her birthday the gift he had
been secretly preparing for her, namely the roll
of his own ancestry, neatly illuminated. It was
somewhat lop-sided, for very few Marigolds had
been discoverable, but away, away back went
the other line of the descent through Earls and
coronets innumerable till it reached the origin-
al and unique King Arrahmedear of Donegal,
above whose glorious name he had illuminated
a royal crown. It was entirely Oswald Owen
Vivian Lancelot's own idea, and when he be-
came engaged to the daughter of a marquis, his
mother felt that she had known it would happen
for years.

Owing probably to the large number of Jews

THE COMPLEAT SNOBS

and journalists and brewers and pawnbrokers
whohavebeenennobledduringthe long Liberal
tenureof office, this particular brand of snobbish-
ness has rather fallen into neglect, and many of
the brightest snobs of Mayfair considerthecult
of the mere peerage a somewhat Victorian pur-
suit. But the more earnest practitioners, like
Lady Mary and Sir Louis Marigold, remain un-
affected by such shallowness. They argue that
the conferring of a peerage is still a symbol of
success, and, loyalist to the core, consider that
those whoaregood enough fortheKingaregood
enough for them. Besides, they have found by
experience that they actually do feel greater rap-
tures in the presence of Royalty than in that of
subjects of the realm, and among subjects of the
realm they like dukes better than marquises,
marquises than earls, earls than viscounts. 1 1 is
not implied that the pleasureableness of their
internal sensations would indicate to them the
rank of a total stranger whose name they were
ignorant of, but knowing his name and his rank,
they find that their delight in con verse with him
increases according to his precedence. Many
pleasures are wholly matters of the imagination,
and this may be one, but the hallucination is in
this case, as in that of other nervous disorders,

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

quite complete. And when a year or two ago
Lady Mary was dangerously ill with appendic-
itis, her husband sensibly assuaged the deep
and genuine anxiety he felt for her, by going
through, day after day, the cards of the eminent
people who had called to make enquiries. A
prince (a very eminent one) was so condescend-
ing as to call twice, once on a Monday and once
on the following Thursday. To this day Sir
Louis cannot but believe that the better news the
doctor gave him about my lady on that happy
afternoon, was somehow connected with the
magic of this repeated visit.

It has been mentioned that Sir Louis is in
the habit of calling his wife ' Princess ' ; it has
also been hinted that she alludes to him as 'Sir
Baronet' There is a touch of badinage, of play-
fulness in both these titles, but below the play-
fulness is a substratum of seriousness. For she
is descended from kings so ancient that nobody
knows anything about them, and he is a real
Baronet, and since his title in ordinary use is
that of a mere knight, she and others of their in-
timates are accustomed to call him Sir Baronet,
in order to mark the difference bet ween him and
such people as provincial mayors or eminent
actors and musicians. It must be supposed, too,

THE COMPLEAT SNOBS

that he is far from discouraging this, since he has
printed on his cards, 'Sir Louis Marigold, Bart.,
M. P., ' in full. It may be unusual, but then there
are, unfortunately, not many Baronets who take
a proper pride in the honours with which their
Sovereign has decorated them or their ances-
tors. Marquisesandearlsputthe degreeof their
nobility on their cards instead of just calling
themselves 'Lord,' and surely a Baronet cannot
go wrong in following so august an example.
But there is another custom of his towhichper-
haps exception may be taken, for it is his habit
when entertaining a luncheon-party at which
mere commoners are present (this is not a fre-
quent occurrence) to step jauntily along in his
proper precedence to the dining-room, leaving
the less exalted persons to follow. H e does it in
acareless, unconscious manner, and this manner
is by no means put on : he walks in front of low-
lier commoners instinctively: hedoesnotthink
about it: his legs just take him. It is perhaps
scarcely necessary to add that instinct is not so
strong with him as to go in before any lady, even
if she were his own washerwoman, for the ob-
ligations of chivalry outweigh with him even
those of nobility. It has always been so with the
true aristocrat, and it is so with him. Perhaps if a

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

Suffragette were present he might go on ahead,
for he considers that all women who hold any
views but his on that subject have unsexed them-
selves. In his more indulgent moments he al-
ludes to them as 'deluded wretches.'

H is pol itics are of course Tory. A Tory Prime
Minister honoured himself by recommending
the King to honour Sir Louis, and much time and
a good deal of money spent in the Tory cause
make it quite likely that a further honour will
some time be conferred upon him when (and if)
his party ever gets back into power. It is signi-
ficant, anyhow, that he has made several visits
lately to the Heralds' College, where the shape
of Viscounts' coronets seemed to interest him a
good deal, for since the motto of his business
life, which has proved so successful, was * Pre-
pare well in advance,' it is likely that it will apply
in such mattersastheseas well, and it may safely
be assumed that on that happy day his spoons
and forks will be found to be already engraved
with the honour conferred on him. To be sure,
should this happen before Lady Mary's brother
finally succumbs to the insidious bottle, she will
find herself a step lower than her previous rank
had been, by becominga Viscountess instead of
remainingan Earl's daughter. But, on theother

THE COMPLEAT SNOBS

hand, this will be but a temporary eclipse, for it
cannot be so very long before she comes from
under her cloud again on the demise of the dip-
somaniac, and shines forth as an independent
Countess. The whole affair, moreover, has been
talked out so constantly by them that they are
sure to have come to a wise decision based on
the true principles of snobbishness.

Snobbishness is no superficial thing with
them, or indeed with anybody ; it springs from
fountains as deep as those of character or reli-
gion. Now that between them they have got the
Peerage practically by heart, its study, though
they often read over favourite passages to-
gether, no longer takes them much time or con-
scious thought, it merely permeates them like
Christianity or the moral qualities. It tinges all
they do, and they do a great many very kind and
considerate and generous things. Sir Baronet
is the most liberal giver ; no appeal made for
a deserving and charitable object ever came to
him in vain, but deep in his heart all the time that
he is signing his munificent cheque, the thankful
cries of the poor folk he has succoured sound in
his ears, as they murmur, 'Thank you, Sir Bar-
onet!' 'Bless you, Sir Baronet! ' Lady Mary is
equally open-handed, especially when children
25

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

and dumb animals are concerned, and she de-
clares she can almost hear the thumping of the
dogs' tails as they strive to say, 'Thank you,
my lady!' ' Bless your ladyship's kind heart.'

Occasionally, out of mere exuberance, Sir
Baronet sounds an insincere note. He wrote
once to Oswald bidding him bring his wife to
dinner in these terms : ' Bring my lady along to
dinner on Tuesday week, my boy. No party,
just ourselves, and I think the Princess told
me the French Ambassador and the Duchess
of Middlesex were to take their cutlets with us.'
. . . But all the time his pen was so trembling
with gratification that for the moment Oswald
thought his father must have a fit of shivering,
till the truer explanation dawnedonhim, and he
realized that the usually neat and careful hand-
writing was blurred with joy. But perhaps this
little insincerity is but the mark of the most com-
plete snob of all, who affects to make light of the
attainments to wards which his holiest and high-
est aspirations have been ever directed. Any-
how, one wouldbe sorry to think that Sir Baronet
was sincere over this, for it would imply that he
was getting used to Ambassadors and Dukes,
that he was becoming blase* with asurfeit of aris-
tocracy. That would be too tragic a fate for so

THE COMPLEAT SNOBS

thoroughly amiable an ass.

There isnothingmorestimulatinginthisdrab
world than to look at those who intensely enjoy
the prosperity which surrounds them, and to see
Sir Baronet stepping along Piccadilly with his
springy walk, and his ruddy face ready to be
wreathed in smiles as he takes off hishat to some
social star, is sufficient to reconcile the cynic
and the disappointed, if they have any touch of
humanity left in them, to a world where some
people have such a wonderfully pleasant time.
Perhaps if cynics were a little simpler, a little
more alive to the possible joys of existence, they
would share some of those raptures themselves.
A princely fortune is no necessity to the snob :
it is possible to taste his joys on a modest com-
petence. But character and thoroughness are
needful : he must read his Peerage till the glam-
our grows about the pages, and must value aright
the little paragraphs in newspapers which record
the doings of the mighty. Unless men are born
with this gift, it is true they will not enter the
highest circle of the Paradise, but they should
at least be able to leave the Inferno far below
them. And as a matter of fact, most people have
a touch (just atouch)of thesnob innate in them,
if they will only take the pains to look for it.
27

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

They may not have the peerage-mind, but prob-
ably there is some sort of worldly success before
which they are willing to truckle. It is worth a
little trouble, in view of the spiritual reward, for
the snob always has an aim in life : he never
drifts along a purposeless existence.

The chronicler is tempted to linger a little
over these happy and prosperous persons, and
forecast the further glories that inevitably await
them. At present a certain number of the Vere
de Veres turn up their patrician noses when
Marigolds are mentioned, which is exceedingly
foolish of them, considering that it is out of
Marigolds that the very best Vere de Veres have
been made. The Marigolds will win eminence
and renown by their industry, their riches, and
their colossal respectability. That was how the
Vere de Veres became the cream of the country,
and instead of calling the Marigolds 'those
tradesmen,' they would be wiser to hail them as
cousins who will buttress up some of their own
tottering lines (if their sons and daughters can
only manage to marry into the Marigolds) by
reinforcing them with their own vigorous blood,
their wealth, and not least, their respectability.
In the next generation Oswald Owen Vivian
Lancelot will be E arl of Ballamuck and Viscount

THE COMPLEAT SNOBS

Marigold, and his children, of whom he has only
eleven at present, will be Members of Parlia-
ment, and hard-working soldiers and diplomat-
ists, with peeresses for sisters. When a few
more years have rolled, the Vere de Veres will
have to respect them, for they will be Vere de
Veres, good, strong, honest Vere de Veres, the
pick of the bunch, for with their healthy bodies,
active brains, and, above all, their untarnished
respectability, they are precisely the folk on
whom honours pour down in spate. And what
is the use of affecting to despise a family that in
a hundred years will number bishops and am-
bassadors and generals among its collaterals,
and will certainly have a family banner in St.
George's Chapel?

AUNT GEORGIE
CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER TWO
AUNTGEORGIE

AUNT GEORGIE'S CHRISTIAN
name as bestowed by godparents with silver
mugs at baptism was not Georgiana but simply
George. He was in fact an infant of the male
sex according to physical equipment, but it
became perfectly obvious even when he was
quite a little boy that he was quite a little girl.
He played with dolls rather than lead soldiers,
and cried when he was promoted to knicker-
bockers. These peculiarities, sad in one so
young, caused his parents to send him to a boys'
school at the early age of nine, where they hoped
he might learn to take a truer view of himself.
But this wider experience of life seemed but to
confirm him in his delusions, for when he quar-
relled with other young gentlemen, he did not
hit them in the face with his fist, but slapped
them with the open hand and pulled their hair.
It was observed also that when he ran (which
he did not like doing) he ran from the knees
instead of striding from the hips. He did little,
however, either in the way of running or of
quarrelling, for he was of a sedentary and senti-
mental disposition, and formed a violent attach-
ment to another young lady, on whom Nature
33 c

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

had bestowed the frame of a male, and they gave
each other pieces of their hair, which were duly
returned to their real owners when they had
tiffs, with inexorable notes similar to those by
which people break off engagements. These
estrangements were followed by rather oily
reconciliations, in which they vowed eternal
friendship again, treated each other to choco-
lates and more hair, and would probably have
kissed each other if they had dared. Their un-
natural sentiments were complicated by a streak
of odious piety, and they were happiest when,
encased in short surplices, they sang treble to-
gether in the school choir out of one hymn-book.
Public-school life checked the outward mani-
festation of girlhood, but Georgie's essential
nature continued to develop in secret. Pub-
licly he became more or less a male boy, but
this was not because he was really growing into
a male boy, but because through ridicule, con-
tempt, and example he found it more convenient
to behave like one. H e did not like boys'games,
but being tall and strong and well-made, and
being forced to take part in them, he played them
with considerable success. But he hated rough-
ness and cold weather and mud, and his infant
piety developed into a sort of sentimental rap-

AUNT GEORGIE

ture with stained-glass windows and ecclesiasti-
cal rites and church music. His public school
was one where Confession to the Chaplain was,
though not insisted on, encouraged, and Georgie
conceived asort of passionforthisathleticyoung
priest, and poured out to him week by week a
farrago of pale and bloodless peccadilloes, and
thought how wonderful he was. Eventually the
embarrassed clergyman, who was of an ingeni-
ous turn of mind, but despaired of ever teaching
Georgie manliness, invented a perfectly new
penance for him, and forbade him to come to
confession, unless he had really something des-
perate to say, more frequently than once every
three weeks. Otherwise, apart from those re-
ligious flirtations, Georgie appeared to be grow-
ing up in an ordinary human manner. But, if
anyone had been skilful enough to dissect him
down to the marrow of his soul, he would have
found that Georgie was not passing from boy-
hood into manhood, but from girlhood into
womanhood.

He went up to Oxford, and there, under the
sentimental influence of the city of spires, the
last trace of his manhood left him. His father,
who, by one of Nature's inimitable conjuring
tricks, was a bluff old squire, rather too fond of

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

port now, just as he had been rather too fond of
the first line of the Gaiety Chorus in his youth,
longed for Georgie to sow some wild oats, to
get drunk or gated, to get entangled with a girl,
to do any thing to show that virility, though sadly
latent, existed in him. But Georgie continued
to disappoint those unedifying wishes : he pre-
ferred barley-water to port, and was always
working in his room by ten in the evening, so
that he would not have known whether he was
gated or not, and he took no interest in any
choruses apart from chapel choirs, and never
got entangled with anybody. Instead he be-
came a Roman Catholic, and a mixture of port,
passion, and apoplexy carried off his father be-
fore he had time to alter his will.

Georgie stepped into his father's shoes, and
continued his own blameless career. He had
an income of some three thousand a year and
a small place in Sussex, and at the conclusion of
his Oxford days, turned over the place in Sussex
to his step-mother and his three plain sisters,
reserving there a couple of rooms for himself,
and took a small neat house in Curzon Street.
H e was both generous and careful about money,
made his sisters ample allowances, and pro-
ceeded to spend the rest of his income thought-

AUNT GEORGIE

fully and methodically. He had an excellent
taste in furniture and decorations, though an
essentially feminine one, and the house in Cur-
zon Street became a comfortable and charming
little nest, with Chippendale furniture in the
drawing-room and bottles of pink bath-salts
with glass spoons in the bath-room. He had
a private den of his own (though anything less
like a den was never seen), with a looking-glass
over the fire-place into whichhestuck invitation-
cards, a Chesterfield sofa, on the arm of which
there often reposed a piece of embroidery, a
writing-table with all sorts of dainty contriv-
ances, such as a smelling-bottle, and a little piece
of soft sponge in a dish, over the damp surface
of which he drew postage-stamps instead of
licking them with his tongue, and by degrees
he got together acollection of carved jade, which
was displayed in a vitrine( vulgarly, aglasscase)
lined with velvet and lit inside by electric light.
He had a brougham motor-car, driven by a
handsome young chauffeur, whom, if he took
the wrong turning, ;he called a ' naughty boy '
through the tube, and was personally attended
by a very smart young parlour-maid, for though
he did not care for girls in any proper manly way,
he liked, when he was sleepy in the morning, to
37

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

hear the rustle of skirts. His cook, whom he
saw every day after breakfast in his den, was an
artiste, and he had a good cellar of light wines.
After lunch and dinner he always made coffee
himself, in Turkish fashion, for his guests, and
passed round with it odd, syrupy liqueurs. His
bedroom was merely a woman's bedroom, with a
blue quilt on the bed, a long cheval-glass on the
floor, silver-backed brushes on the toilet-table
and no razors, for a neighbouring barber came
to shave him every morning. In cold weather,
when his mauve silk pyjamas were hung out to
warm in front of the fire, the parlour-maid in-
serted into his bed a hot-water bottle, jacketed
in the same tone of blue as his quilt. On that
Georgie put his soft pink feet, and always went
to sleep immediately.

Here he lived a kind and blameless life, but
the life of a sprightly widow of forty, who is rich
and childless, and does not intend to marry again.
In the morning, after seeing his cook, he wrote
a few letters (he did not use the telephone much
because it tickled his ear, and he disliked talking
into a little box where other people had talked
and breathed) and these he generally sealed with
a signet belonging to his step-mother's grand-
mother, which had a coronet on it. He was a

AUNT GEORGIE

little snobbish in this regard, in a Victorian old-
fashioned way, for though his step-mother was
no sort of relation to him he took over her re-
lations as cousins, and hunted up the most re-
mote connections of hers, for adoption, in the
Peerage. His letters being finished he took his
soft hat and sat at his club for half an hour read-
ing the papers. Generally he walked out to
lunch, and was called for by his car about a
quarter to three. Sometimeshehadalittle shop-
ping to do, and if not, went for a drive, sitting
very upright, much on the look-out for acquaint-
ances, and returned home for tea. After tea he
sat on his sofa working at his embroidery, had
ahotbath,and,exceptwhen,abouttwiceaweek,
he had a few people to dine with him, went out
to dinner. H e did not play bridge but patience
and the piano, both of which he manipulated
with a good deal of skill. When he entertained
at his own house, his guests were chiefly young
men with rather waggly walks and little jerky
movements of their hands, and old ladies with
whom he was always a great success, for he
understood them so well. He called them all,
young men and old ladies alike, ' my dear/ and
they had great gossips together, and they often
said Georgie was very wicked, which was a lie.

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

He had considerable musical taste, as well
as proficiency on the piano, and very soon his
life became a busy one in the sense, at any rate,
that he had very little time for his embroidery.
He built out a big room at the back of his house,
and gave tinkling little modern musical parties,
atwhichhe introduced masses of young genius-
es to the notice of his friends. Also he took to
practising his piano with some seriousness, and
would often forgo his walk to the club and his
perusal of the morning papers in order to work
at his music, and sat at his instrument for two
hours together, with his rings and his handker-
chief on the candle-brackets. His taste was
modern, and he liked the kind of piece about
which you are not sure if it isoverornot,orwhat
has happened. He paid quantities of country-
house visits to the homes of his old-lady friends
and his step-mother's cousins, where he would
sit in the library reading and writing his letters
till half-past twelve, and take a little stroll with
a brown cape on his arm till lunch-time. He
sketched too, and produced rather messy water-
colours of churches and beech-trees, and made
crayon-portraitsofhishostessorherboys,which
he always sent her with his letter of thanks for
a most pleasant visit, neatly framed. His por-

AUNT GEORGIE

traits of elderly ladies had acertain resemblance
to each other, being based on a formula of a lace
cap, a row of pearls, and a thoughtful expres-
sion. He had a similar formula for young men,
of which the chief ingredients were a cricket-
shirt and no coat or Adam's apple, long eye-
lashes, and a girlish mouth. He was not good at
eyes, so his sitters were always looking down.
After lunch at these most pleasant visits he went
out fora drive inamotor to see some neighbour-
ing point of interest or to call on some adopted
cousin whom he had discovered to live some-
where about. He rested in his own room after
these fatigues and excitements for an hour be-
fore dinner, with his feet up and a dressing-gown
on, and afterwards would work on a crayon-
sketch, play the piano, or make himself agree-
able to anybody who was in need of gentle con-
versation. Often he would settle down thus in
afriend's house for a fort nigh tat a time, in which
case he brought his embroidery and hiscarwith
him, and was most useful in taking other guests
out for drives, or bringing home members of
a shooting-party. Occasionally, for no reason,
he roused violent antagonism in the breasts of
rude brainless men, and after he had left the
smoking-room in the evening, one would some-

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

times say to another, ' Good God! What is it?'
Georgie lived in this whirl of pleasant pur-
suits for some ten years. The only disagree-
able incident that occurred during this time was
that his attractive chauffeur married his attrac-
tive parlour-maid, and for a little, surrounded
by hateful substitutes, he was quite miserable.
But he wooed the selfish pair back again by tak-
ing a garage with a flat above it, where they
could keep house, raising Bowles's wages, and
getting in another parlour-maid when the curse
of Eve was on Mrs. Bowles, and when he was
now about thirty-five, Georgie definitely de-
veloped auntishness. As seen above, there were
already many symptoms of it, but now the dis-
ease laid firm and incurable hold on him.

H is auntishness was of the proverbial maiden-
aunt variety, and was touched with acertain acid
and cattish quality that now began to tinge his
hitherto good-natured gossipy ways. As usu-
ally happens, he tended to detect in his friends
and acquaintances thedefects which he laboured
under himself, and found that Cousin Betty was
getting so ill-natured, and Cousin John had
spoken most sarcastically and unkindly to him.
H is habits became engrained, and when he went
out to dinner, as he continued to do, he took

AUNT GEORGIE

with him a pair of goloshes in a brown paper
parcel, if he meant to walk home, in case the
crossings might be muddy. He was faithful
enough to his old friends, the waggly-walking
young men of his youth, and such of his old
ladies who survived, and still went out with them
on sketching-parties when they stayed together
in the country, but otherwise he sought new
friends among young men and young women,
to whom he behaved in a rather disconcerting
manner, sometimes, especially on sunny morn-
ings, treating them like contemporaries, and
wishing to enter into their * fun, 'sometimes pet-
ting them, as if they were children, and some-
times, as if they were naughty children, getting
cross with them. He wanted in fact to be a girl
still, and yet receive the deference due to a
middle-aged woman, which is the clou to maiden-
auntishness. He had little fits of belated and
senile naughtiness, and would take a young man
to the Gaiety, and encourage him to point out
which of the girls seemed to him most attrac-
tive, and then scold him for his selfishness if
he did not appear eager to come back home
with him, and sit for an hour over the fire until
Georgie felt inclined to go to bed. Or, having
become a sort of recognised chaperone in Lon-
43

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

don, he would take a girl-cousin (step-mother's
side) to a ball, and be vexed with her because
she had not had enough dancing by one o'clock.
It must not be supposed that it was his habit to
appear in so odious a light, but it sometimes
happened. To do him justice, he was repentant
for his ill-humour next day, and would arrange
a little treat for a boy and a girl together, driving
them down in his car to the Mid-Surrey golf-
club, where they had a game, while he sat and
sketched the blue-bells in Kew Gardens.

By this time his step -mother was dead
(Georgiedid a lovely crayon of her after death),
and two out of his three plain sisters had mar-
ried. The other used often to stay with him in
London, and often he would bring quite a large
party of young people down to the house in
Sussex, where they had great romps. Georgie
was quite at his best when entertaining in his
own house, and he liked nothing better every
now and then than a pillow-fight in the passage,
when, emitting shrill screams of dismay and
rapture, and clad in a discreet dressing-gown
over his mauve silk pyjamas, he laughed himself
speechless at the 'fun,' and bore the breakage
of the glass of his water-colour pictures with
the utmost good-humour. But when he had

AUNT GEORGIE

had enough himself, he expected that every-
body else should have had enough too, therein
disclosing the fell features of Aunt Georgie.

Georgie did not, as the greyer seas of the
forties and fifties began to engulf him, fall into
the errors of grizzly kittens, but took quite kindly
to spectacles when he wanted to read the paper
or write his letters, and made no secret of his
annual visit to H arrogate, to purge himself of
the gouty tendencies which he had inherited
from his father. He did not, of course, an-
nounce the fact that he had had a fresh supply
of teeth, or that he had instructed his dentist to
give a studied irregularity to them, and it is
possible that he used a little hair-dye on his
moustache which he clipped in the new fashion,
leaving only two small tufts of hair like tails
below his nostrils, but he quite dropped pillow-
fights, though keeping up his music and his
embroidery, and more than keeping up the in-
creasing ill-nature of his tittle-tattle. H e made
great pets of his chauffeur's children, who in their
artless way sometimes called him ' Daddy' or
* Grandpa.' He did not quite like either of
these appellations, and their mother was in-
structed to impress on their infant minds that
he was ' Mister Uncle Georgie/ But * Miss
45

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

Auntie Georgia' would have been far more ap-
propriate.

It is perhaps needless to add that he has
never married and never will. Soon the second
set of girl-friends whom he chose when he first
developed auntishness will be middle-aged
women, and as, since then, he has made quanti-
ties of new young friends, his table will never
be destitute of slightly effeminate young men
and old ladies. Those are the sections of
humanity with whom he feels most at home,
because he has most in common with them.
He makes a fresh will about once every five
years, leaving a good deal of his property to the
reigning favourites, who are probably cousins
(of his step-mother's). But most of them are
cut out at the next revision, because they have
shown themselves ' tarsome,' or in some way
inconsiderate. But probably it will be a long
time before anybody reaps the benefit of these
provisions, for apart from his gout, which is kept
in check by his visits to H arrogate, Georgie is
a very healthy old lady. H e lives a most whole-
some life with his little walks and drives, and
never, never has he committed any excesses of
any sort. These very ageing things, the pas-
sions, have never vexed him, and he will no

AUNT GEORGIE

doubt outlive most of those who from time to
time have been beneficiaries under his will.

After all he has done less harm than most
people in the world, for no one ever heeded his
gossip, and even if he has not done much good
or made other people much happier, he has al-
ways been quite good and happy himself, for
such malice as he impotently indulged in he
much enjoyed, and he hurt nobody by it.

It would be a very cruel thing to think of
sending poor Georgie to Hell ; but it must be
confessed that, if he went to Heaven, he would
make a very odd sort of angel.

QUACK-QUACK
CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREE
QUACK-QUACK

UNDYING INTEREST IN THINGS
abstruse, experimental, or charlatanish keeps
Mrs. Weston perennially young. She has a
small pink husband , who desires nothing more of
life than to be allowed a room to himself, regular
meals, a little walk after lunch followed by a nap
at his club, and a quantity of morning and even-
ing papers to read. Indeed it may be said of
him that the morning and evening papers were
his first day and will certainly be his last, for he
is the sort of person who will die suddenly and
quietly after dinner in his arm-chair. All those
simple needs are easily supplied him, for when,
for reasons to be subsequently mentioned, he
cannot get regular meals at home he procures
them at the Carlton grill-room.

The two have no children, and her husband
being so simply provided for, Mrs. Weston has
plenty of leisure to pursue her own weird life.
She began, as most students of the faddish side
of life do, by using her excellent physical health
as a starting-point for hypochondria, and pro-
ceeded to cure herself of imaginary ailments
with such ruthless ferocity that if she had not
stopped in time, she might really have become

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

ill. As it was, she arrested her downward course
of healing before it had done anything more
than make her thin, and took to another fad.
But she resumed her pleasant plumpness when
she embraced spiritualism, for spiritualism for
some obscure reason almost invariably causes
people to lay on flesh.

To begin at the beginning of her quackings,
she was about thirty when the shattering con-
viction came over her, afterreading a little book
about gout, that she entirely consisted of uric
acid. This painful self-revelation caused her
husband to become a regular habitue of the
Carlton grill-room, for he was not strong enough
to stand the ideal regime which blasted his once
comfortable home. For a dayortwo he insisted
on continuing his suicidal diet, but he found it
impossible to enjoy his cutlet when his wife told
him that all he ate turned the moment he had
swallowed it, into waste products, and that his
apparent appetite was merely the result of fer-
mentation. Such news when he was at lunch
quite spoiled his pleasure and stopped his fer-
mentation. For herself, she proceeded to obtain
body-building materials out of nuts and cheese,
and calorics out of the oil with which she soaked
the salads that were hoary with vegetable salts.

QUACK-QUACK

All tea and coffee were, of course, forbidden,
since they reeked of purins, while if you drank
anything at meals, you might just as well have
a glass of prussic acid then and there, in order
to get it over quicker. Probably if anyone had
told her only to eat between meals, she would
have tried that too. B ut all day the kitchen boiler
rumbled with the ebullition of the oceans of hot
water that had to be drunk in the middle of the
morning and the middle of the afternoon, and
before going to bed. It had to be sipped, and
since at each sittinga quart or so must be lodged
within her, the process was a lengthy one, and
she could not get out of doors very much. But
exercise and air were provided for by courses of
stretchings and bendings and flickings and kick-
ings done by an open window in front of a chart
and a looking-glass, followed by spells of com-
plete relaxation (which meant lying down on the
floor). Then there were deep-breathing exer-
cises, in which Mrs. Weston had to draw in her
breath very slowly, hold it till she got purple in
the face and the veins stood out like cords on
her benignant forehead, and emit it all in one
hurricane-puff. The dizziness and queer sensa-
tions that sometimes followed she took to be
a proof of how much good it was doing her.
53

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

Strange hungry-looking visitors used to arrive
at queer hours, and talk to their enthralled pupil
in an excited manner about arterio-sclerosis, and
chromagens, and produce out of their pockets
little packets of tough food, tasting of travelling-
bags, which they masticated very thoroughly,
and wh ich in the space of a square inch contained
the nutritive value of eight mutton chops and
two large helpings of apple tart. Fortified by
this they launched into the functions and de-
rangements of the principal organs of the body,
with an almost obscene wealth of detail, while
Mrs. Weston used to sit in rapt attention to
those sybils and long for dinner time to come in
order that she might thwart her uric acid again.
She pursued her meatless course for several
weeks with fanatic enthusiasm, and having been
perfectly well before, found that, apart from a
slight falling away of flesh, her iron constitution
stood the strain remarkably well. Then while
the nuts were yet in her mouth, so to speak, it
struck her that she ought to go in for breathing
exercises more thoroughly, and found that they
led straight into the lap of the wisdom of the
Yogis. This philosophy instantly claimed her
whole attention, and she steeped herself in its
manuals, and advertised in the Morning Post

QUACK-QUACK

foraGuru. An individual in a turban answered
this in person, but as, after his second visit she
found thatavaluable ring was missing, which at
his biddingshe had taken off her finger inorder
to be less trammelled by material bonds, shede-
cided to be her own Guru, and with the chapter
on 'Postures' open before her, practised tying
herself into knots. Her abstinence from meat
came in useful, since a light diet was recom-
mended by her new ideal in life, so also did her
practice in deep-breathing, for Pranayama was
entirely concerned with that, and when you had
mastered Postures and Pranayama you would
live in perfect health and vigour, as long as you
chose. Again her superb physical health stood
her in good stead, and she neither dislocated
her limbs from Postures, nor had a single stroke
of apoplexy from holding her breath. During
the Yogi attack her husband ceased to take
his meals at the Carlton grill-room, for he was
allowed meat again in moderation. But he al-
ways used to go out for a walk when the great
breathings began in the middle of themorning,
since he hated the idea that in the next room
Jane was sitting cross-legged on the floor, ex-
haling her long-held breath through one nostril
while she closed the other with her finger, mut-

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

tering * Om! Om!' Long periods of absolute
silence alternated with these mutterings, and
it gave him an uncomfortable feeling to know
that Jane was holding her breath all that time.
A way from Chesterfield Street the image of her
was less vivid, and when he returned for lunch
Postures were over too, and though rather stiff
and tired, she would declare that she never had
known before what real health meant. This
was always a pleasant hearing, and he would
congratulate her on her convalescence, and in-
stantly repent of his cordiality, because she
urged him just to do a couple of Postures a day
and see how he felt.

Then a misfortune which within a couple of
days she temporarily called the turning-point
of her life, befell Mrs. Weston, for she caught a
chill (manifestly from posturing on a cold damp
day in front of an open window) which indicated
its presence by a simultaneous attack of lumbago
and a streaming cold in the head. This latter
made the inhalation of breath through the nos-
trils quite impossible, and the former, Postures.
So shut out from the practice of Pranayamaand
Postures, she came winging it back from the
East, and, happening to come across a copy of
the Christian Science Journal, flew to the bosom

QUACK-QUACK

of Mrs. Eddy. Her only regret was thatshe had
not left the heathen fold in time to frustrate
the false claims of her indisposition, which had
taken a firm and painful hold of her, but she had
scarcely learned byheart the True Statement of
Being when the severity of the symptoms began
sensibly to diminish. In point of fact within
three days she was perfectly well again, as she
might have been all along if she had only known
in time that there was no such thing as lumbago.
Neither was there such a thing as uric acid or
chromagens, and in consequence, since there
was nothing to fear from disorders that had no
existence, she ordered an excellent dinner that
evening, and over ox-tail soup and fish and a
roast pheasant, of all of which she ate heartily,
she discoursed to her husband on the new truth
that had risen like dawn over her previously
benighted horizon. But, such is the ingratitude
of man, he felt that he would sooner have eaten
his dinner in silence at the grill-room than at
home to the accompaniment of such preposter-
ous harangues. And when, after dinnerjust as
he was settling down toagame of patience, Jane
asked him to join with her in the recital of the
True Statement of Being, he replied with some
asperity that a True Statement of Balderdash
57

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

was a fitter name for such nonsense.

Christian Science made Mrs. Weston bright-
er and younger and more robust than ever. Be-
ing quite convinced that there were no such
things as discomfort or evil or disease or death,
she recognised with increased vividness that
the world was an exceedingly pleasant place,
and went about all day with a brilliant smile.
This smile became rather hard and fixed when
small false claims put in their appearance, as,
for instance, when a fish-bone seemingly stuck
in her throat, or when, reciting the True State-
ment of Being as she went upstairs, she forgot
the last step and tumbled rather heavily on to
her knees. Thus, in the semblance of choking
or of agonising pain in the knee-cap, it was
necessary to tie the smile on, so to speak, lest
the false claim should get a foothold. What
made the house more uncomfortable for her
husband was that his false claims were ignored
also, so that if his study fire was found not to be
lit, and the room in consequence like an ice-
house, instead of sympathising with him over
the carelessness of the housemaid, Jane con-
tinued to assure him that there was no such thing
as cold, though her teeth were chattering in her
head. She got into touch with other sufferers

QUACK-QUACK

from these cheerful delusions, who seemed to
him to resemble gargoyles with their fixed in-
flexible smiles, and their attitudes of determined
hilarity,and the housebecame a perfect Bedlam
of invincible cheerfulness, which was depressing
to the last degree. He had amoment of reviving
hope when Jane woke one morning with a very
plausible claim in a wisdom-tooth, which the un-
initiated would have called a raging toothache,
and which he hoped might convince her. But
learning, by telephone, from a healer that though
the pain would certainly vanish with absent
treatment, it was permissible to go to a dent-
ist in order to save time, for mere manipula-
tion (in other words having the tooth out), his
hopes faded again. Mrs. Eddy herself, it ap-
peared, had consulted a dentist in such circum-
stances, and Mrs. Weston did the same, and
came home, brighter than ever, having had the
tooth extracted quite painlessly under laughing-
gas. The last thing she had said to herself, so
she triumphantly announced, before she went
off was that the extraction wouldn't hurt at all,
and it didn't. The True Statement of Being
had scored one triumph the more in completely
annihilating not only the sense of pain, but
common-sense also.
59

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

Now the insidiousness of fads is that they
are invariably based on something which is true
and reasonable, and thus have an appeal to
reasonable persons. In this they are unlike
superstitions, for superstition is in its essence
unreasonable, and Mrs. Weston would no more
have bowed to the new moon (seen not through
glass) or turned her money, than she would
have been made miserable by breaking a look-
ing-glass. She knew perfectly well that the fact
of her seeing the new moon could not affect the
prosperity of her investments, while if that ami-
able satellite had any power over her money it
would certainly exercise it whether she curtsied
or not. But her embrace of the vegetarian and
Christian Science faith was undoubtedly based
on reason ; it was true that fleshless foods con-
tained less uric acid than sirloin of beef: it was
true also that if she or any body else had a slight
headache, that headache would in all probability
efface itself quicker if she occupied herself in
other matters, and, instead of sitting down to
think about her headache denied it in principle
by disregarding it. But it is easily possible to
stretch a reasonable proposition too far, and
make it applicable to things to which it does
not apply, and it is exactly here that the faddist

QUACK-QUACK

begins to differ from reasonable people. A
sufficiently excruciating pain cannot be ban-
ished from the consciousness, and it is not the
slightest use asserting that it does not exist. At
this point, with regard to her wisdom-tooth,
she became momentarily reasonable again, and
had it out with laughing-gas like a sensible per-
son. But then her mind rushed back again, like
air into an exhausted receiver, into the vacuum
of faddishness, and she became happier and more
ridiculous than ever. The effect must never be
denied : the faddist while convinced of her fad
is extremely cheerful, as is natural to one who
has found out and is putting in practice the secret
of ideal existence. It made poor Mr. Weston
very uncomfortable, but since one of the strong-
est characteristics of Christian Scientists is their
inhuman disregard of other people, she did not
take any notice of a little thing like that, and
proceeded to make home unhappy with utter
callousness.

But it was not her way to attach herself for
very long to one creed : she flew, like a bee
gathering honey from every flower, to suck the
sweetness out of every fad, and presently she
turned her volatile mind to the study of the
unseen world that she suddenly felt to be sur-
61

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

rounding her. Christian Science no doubt had
its basis in the unseen, but in its application it
was chiefly concerned with bodily ailments and
discomforts, and the True Statement of Being
harnessed itself, so to speak, to a congested liver
or a sore throat. But now she went deeper yet,
and took the final plunge of the faddist and the
credulous into the sea of spiritualism.

Now in this highly organised city of London,
if you want anything you can always get on the
track of something of the sort by a few enquiries,
and one of Mrs. Weston's discarded vegetarians
introduced her to the celebrated medium, and
general fountain-head in the matters of table-
turning, crystal-gazing, automatic writing, ma-
terialisation, stances, planchettes and auras, the
Princess Spookoffski. Nobody could produce
positive proof that she was not a Russian Prin-
cess, for Russia is a very large place, and has
probably many princesses, nor that her com-
panion, a small man with a chin-beard and a
positive passion for going into trances, was not
a Polish refugee of high birth. This august lady
was beginning to do very good business in town,
for London, ever Athenian in its desire for some
new thing, had just turned its mind to psychical
matters, and held stances with quenched lights

QUACK-QUACK

in the comfortable hour between tea and din-
ner, and had much helpful converse with the
spirits of departed dear ones, and discarnate in-
telligences, that were not always remarkably
intelligent.

Mrs. Weston accordingly went by appoint-
ment to the Princess's flat in a small street off
Charing Cross Road, and was received by the
Polish refugee of high birth, who conducted her
through several small rooms, opening out of each
other, to the presence of the sybil. These rooms
had a lot of muslin draped about them, and were
dimly lit with small oil lamps in front of shrines
containing images or portraits hung with faded
yellow jasmine of the great spiritual guides from
Moses down to Madame Blavatsky, and a faint
smell of incense and cigarettes hung about them.
In the last of these the Princess was sitting lost
in profound meditation. She wore a blue robe,
serpents of yellow and probably precious metal
writhed up her arm, and she had a fat pasty face
with eyebrows so black and abundant as to be
wholly incredible. Eventually she raised her
head, and with a deep sigh fixed her beady eyes
on Mrs. Weston. Then in a throaty voice she
said:

1 My child, you 'ave a purple 'alo.'
63

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

This was very gratifying, especially when the
Princess explained that only the most elect souls
have purple halos, and the man with the chin-
beard, whom the Princess called Gabriel dear,
said that the moment he touched Mrs.Weston's
hand he knew she had power. Thereupon the
Princess's fingers began to twitch violently, and
Gabriel dear, explaining that Raschia, the spirit
of an ancient Egyptian priestess, possessed her,
brought a writing-pad and a pencil, and the
Princess, with Raschia to guide her, dashed off
several pages of automatic script. This was
written in curious broken English, and the Prin-
cess gaily explained that darling Raschia was
not very good at English yet, for she was
only learning. But the message was quite in-
telligible, and clearly stated that this new little
friend, Mrs. Weston,wasabeingofthebrightest
psychical gifts, which must instantly be culti-
vated. It ended 'Ta,ta, darlings. Raschia must
fly away. God bless you all.'

It was not to be wondered at that after so
cordial a welcome, M rs. Weston joined Princess
Spookoffski's circle, and went there again next
day for a regular stance, price two guineas a
head. There were fourother personsbeside the
Princess and Gabriel and they all had purple

QUACK-QUACK

halos, for the Princess was sogreatan aristocrat
in the spiritual world (as well as being a Princess
on the mortal plane) that she only 'took' purple
halos. The room swam with incense, a small
musical-box was placed in themiddle of the table,
and hardly had the lights been put out and the
circle made, when Gabriel, who was to be the
medium, went off into a deep trance, as his ster-
torous breathing proved, and the musical-box
began to play 'Lead, kindly Light.1 On which
the Princess said —

'Ah, perhaps the dear Cardinal will come to
us. Let us all sing.'

Thereupon they all began helping the Car-
dinal to come by joining in to the best of their
powers, with the gratifying result that before
they were half-way through the second verse, a
stentorian baritone suddenly joined in too, and
that was the Cardinal singing his own hymn.
He had a quantity of wholly edifying things to
say when the hymn was over, such as * beyond
the darkness there is light/ and 'beyond death
there is life, 'and 'beyond trouble there is peace.'
Having delivered himself of these illuminating
truths, he said 'Good-bye, Benedictine, my chil-
dren,' and left the mortal plane. Thereupon
there was dead silence again, except for Gabriel's
65 E

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

stertorous breathing.

A perfect tattoo of raps followed, and amid
peals of spiritual laughter, Pocky announced
that he was coming. Pocky was a dear naughty
boy, the Princess explained to Mrs. Weston, so
full of fun, and so mischievous, and had been,
when on earth, a Hungarian violinist. Pocky's
presence was soon announced by a shrill scream
from the lady on Mrs. Weston's right, who said
the naughty boy had given her such a slap.
Then he pulled the Princess's hair, and a voice
close to Mrs. Weston said ''Ullo, 'ullo, 'ere is a
new friend. What a nice lady! Kissme, ducky/
and Mrs. Weston distinctly felt a touch on her
neck below her ear. Then after another bastin-
ado of raps, Pocky's face, swathed in white
muslin and faintly luminous, appeared above
the middle of the table. They had had lovely
music that day, he told them, 'on the other side,'
and Pocky had played to them. If they all said
'please,' he would play to them now, and after
they had all said 'please,' play to them he did on
a violin. His tune was faintly reminiscent of a
Brahms valse, but as it was a spirit air it could
not have been that. Then with a clatter the violin
descended on to the middle of the table, and
Pocky, after blowing kisses to them all, went

QUACK-QUACK

away in peals of happy laughter.

Thereafter Mrs. Weston became a prey to
psychical things. She gazed into the crystal she
purchased from the Princess ; she sat for hours,
pencil in hand, waiting for automatic script to
outline itself on her virgin paper ; she took
excursions into astrology; she frequented a
fashionable palmist, who gave her the most
gratifying information about her future, and
assured her that marvellous happiness and suc-
cess would attend her every step in life, so long
asshe regularly consulted Mrs. Jones, say once a
week at seven and sixpence. The Princess and
Gabriel gave a stance in Chesterfield Street,
and put her into communication with her great-
uncle, whose portrait by Lawrence happened to
be hung in the hall. The Princess had been
struck with this the moment she saw it, for the
purpleness of the halo (even in the oil-picture)
astonished her, and she asked who that saint
was. H e had not been recognised as such while
on the earth, but no doubt he had learned much
afterwards, for his remarks at the stance that
evening equalled Cardinal Newman's for spirit-
ual beauty. To clinch the matter, he material-
ised at the next seance, and apart from his nose,
which certainly did resembleGabriers, his great-

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

niece found that he exactly corresponded with
her childish remembrances of him.

For several months these spiritual experi-
ences were a source of great happiness to Mrs.
Weston, but, though encouraged to persevere,
she could never see anything in her crystal
except the distorted reflection of the room, nor
would Raschia do anything in the way of auto-
matic script except cover the paper with angled
lines which resembled fortifications. Similarly
at the stances, Pocky and Uncle Robert and
Cardinal Newman did not seem to get on, but
remained on their respective levels of mischiev-
ousness and saintliness, without any further re-
velations. Her attendances became less fre-
quent and her crystal grew dusty from disuse,
while she found that whether she consulted Mrs.
Jones or not, her life moved forward on a quite
prosperous course. But fortunately about this
time she encountered a disciple of the Higher
Thought, and soared away again into the bright
zenith of another enthusiasm, which still at pre-
sent holds her.

She is one of the happiest freaks in all May fair,
with never adull or a despondent moment. The
limits of a normal lifetime are not large enough
to allow her to exhaust all the quackeries with

QUACK-QUACK

which from time immemorial the inquisitive
sons of men have deluded and delighted them-
selves, and if she lives till ninety, which is quite
probable, she will continue to find fresh out-
lets for her exuberant credulity. Just now she
finds that Higher Thought is much assisted by
walking with bare feet through wet grass for a
quarter of an hour every morning. The only
sufficiently private grass in London is a small
sooty patch in her own back-garden. But it is
grass, and it is usually wet in the early morning,
and she has her bath afterwards.

THE POISON OF ASPS
CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FOUR
THE POISON OF ASPS

HORACE CAMPBELL HAS AN UN-
erring gift of smudging whatever he speaks of.
As he speaks most of the time, he manages to
smudge a good deal, and in consequence is in
great demand at somewhat smudgy houses by
reason of his appropriate and amusing convers-
ation. Every decent man would like to kickhim,
and every nice woman would like to slap his fat
white face, and so his habitats are the establish-
ments of those not so foolishly particular. But
though he lunches and dines without intermis-
sion at other people's houses, he is in no degree
one who sings for his dinner, for he has a quite
distinct career of his own, and spends his morn-
ings earning not daily bread only, but truffles
and asparagus and all the more expensive foods,
by teaching other people to sing. His know-
ledge of voice-production is quite unrivalled,
and he could probably, if he chose, turn a corn-
crake into a contralto. The enormous fees that
he charges thus enable him to compress into
three hours the period of his working day, and
during that time he is the father and mother of
most of the beautiful noises that next year will
be heard rising from human throats at concerts

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

and opera-houses. Then, his business being
over and his pocket fat, he puts on his black
morning coat, and his cloth-topped shoes, his
grey silk tie with the pearl tie-pin, and goes
forth to cause himself as well as his pocket to
grow fat, and makes a music of his own.

Now his thesis, his working hypothesis, the
basis of his conversation, is this. There are al-
ways several possible causes which may account
for all that happens in the busy little world of
London, and in discussing such happenings, he
invariably assumes the smudgiest and more
scandalous cause. A few instances will make
this clear.

Example (i): John Smith is engaged to
Eliza Jones.

Possible causes :

(i.) John Smith loves Eliza Jones and Eliza
Jones loves John Smith.

(ii.) John Smith is after Eliza Jones's money.

(iii.) It was high time that John Smith did
marry Eliza Jones.

Of these possible causes Horace Campbel
leaves cause (i.) out of the question as not worth
consideration. Cause (ii.) may account for it,
but he invariably prefers cause (iii.).

Or again —

THE POISON OF ASPS

Example (2) : Mrs. Snookes went to the
opera with Mr. Snookes.

Probable causes :

(i.) Husband and wife went to the opera be-
cause they like going to the opera.

(ii.) Mrs. Snookes has an affair with the
famous tenor Signor Topnotari.

(iii.) Mr. Snookes is paid £2 : 2 :o a night to
applaud the soprano Signora Beeinalt.

It is idle to point out which cause Horace
Campbell proceeds to discuss.

Example (3) : An eminent statesman goes
into the country for a week-end.

Possible causes :

(i.) The eminent statesman needs rest.

(ii.) ' Somebody' goes with him.

Horace Campbell's law of causation again
applies.

Here then is the postulate which lies at the
root of his conversation, his standpoint towards
life. He does not bear ill-will towards those on
whose conduct he habitually places the worst
conceivable motive, and he has no political or
personal objection to the eminent statesman,
whom he would be very glad to know: it is
merely that a nasty thing perches on his mind
with greater facility than a nice one, and evokes
75

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

greater sympathy there. Scandalous innuen-
does seem to him more amusing than innocent
interpretations, and so too, it appears, do they
seem to those at whose tables he makes himself
so entertaining. H is stories are considered ' too
killing,' whereas there is nothing very killing
about the notion that Mr. and Mrs. Snookes
went to the opera because they liked music.
Also he has a perfect command of the French
language, and often for the sake of guileless
butlers and footmen he tells his little histories
in French, which produces an impression of in-
trigue and wit in itself. Love-affairs, the theme
round which he revolves, are no doubt of peren-
nial human interest, but he has but little sym-
pathy with a love-affair founded on or culminat-
ing in marriage. It must have some taint of the
illicit to be worth his busy embroidering needle;
the other has a touch of the bourgeois about it.
Suggestiveness is more to his mind than state-
ment, hints than assertions. To judge by his
conversation you would think that he and the
world generally swam in fathomless oceans of
vice, but as far as conduct goes, he never swam
a stroke. At the utmost he took off his shoes
and stockings, and paddled at the extreme edge
of that unprofitable sea. He just pruriently

THE POISON OF ASPS

paddles there with his fat white feet. . . .

It has been said that every decent man would
like to kick him, but injustice to him it must be
added that he is not nearly so unkindly disposed
towards anybody. Decent men, like such bour-
geois emotions as honest straightforward love,
only bore him, and he merely yawns in their
faces. But though he has no direct malice, no
desire to injure anyone by \uspetites saletts, he
has, it must be confessed, a grudge against all
those whom he considers collectively as being
at the top of the tree. He has enough brains to
know that the majority of the class Mr. and Mrs.
Not-quite-in-it, who are his intimatecircle, have
not a quarter of his cleverness, but what he has
not brains to see is that the very gifts of belittle-
ment and scandal-scattering that make him such
a tremendous success with them, are exactly the
gifts which prevent his being welcomed in more
desirable circles. It would be altogether be-
yond the mark to hint that he is in any way
under a cloud : at the most he is, like the cuttle-
fish, enveloped in an obscurity of his own mak-
ing. Though perfectly honest himself, he would
certainly, if anyone remarked that honesty was
the best policy, retort that successful swindling
was at least a good second, and it is exactly that
77

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

habitofmindthatcauseshimtobe//0^/tf,ashe
would say himself, among the Not-quite-in-its.
H umour, of which he has plenty, is no doubt the
salt of life, but all his humour has gone rancid.
It is there all right, but it has gone bad, and
gives a healthy digestion aches. But flies settle
on it, and are none the worse. Though there is
no direct malice in him towards those against
whom he so incessantly uses his little toy tar-
squirt, there is a distinct trait of jealousy, that
one vice that is quite barren of pleasure, for of
all the commandments there is none except the
tenth the breaking of which does not bring to
the transgressor some momentary gratification.
That, too, accounts in large measure for the rap-
tures he causes at the tables of the Not-quite-in-
its, for they, like him, yearn to be quite in it, and
not being able to manage it, applaud this dainty
use of the tar-squirt against those who are.
They have plenty of money, plenty of brains,
plenty of artistic tastes, and they would certainly
scream with laughter if they were told that it
was just the want of a very bourgeois quality,
namely good-nature, that bars the fulfilment of
their just desires. Yet such is the case : they are
not 'kind inside.' They are (ever so slightly)
pleased at other people's checks and set-backs,

THE POISON OF ASPS

and herein in the main consists their second-
rateness.

Horace Campbell is perhaps the priest of this
little nest of asps, and without doubt the priest-
ess is the amazing Mrs. Dealtry, now flaming
in the sunset of her witty discontented life. She
is tall and corpulent, with wonderful vitality and
quantities of auburn hair and carmine lip salve,
and mauve scarves, and when she and Horace
Campbell get together, as they do two or three
times a day, to discuss their friends, those who
die, so to speak, and are dismissed by them, are
the lucky ones, for the rest they drive with whips
through the London streets, without a rag of re-
putation to cover them. She, like Horace, has
plenty of humour, and if the sight of a wrinkled
old woman with a painted face, and one high-
heeled foot in the grave, dealing out horrible
innuendoes like a pack of cards, does not make
you feel sick, you will enjoy her conversation
very much. Years ago she started the theory
that Horace was devotedly attached to her, and
for her sake committed celibacy, and though she
has changed her friends more often than she
changes her dress, she still sticks to the grati-
fying belief that she has wrecked his life.

* Horace might have done anything/ she is
79

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

accustomed to say, 'but he would always waste
his time on me. Poor Horace! such a dear, isn't
he, but how much aged in this last year or two.
And I can't think why somebody doesn't tell
him to have his teeth attended to.'

Then as Horace entered the room she made
a place for him on the sofa.

* Monster, come here at once,' she said * Now
what is the truth about Lady Genge's sudden
disappearance ? I am told he simply turned her
out of the house, which any decent man would
have done years ago.'

'He did, 'said Horace, 'and she always came
in again by the back door. This time he has
turned her out of the back door. On dit que
"Cherchezle valet.'"

Mrs. Dealtry gavea little scream of laughter.

'Last time it was the girl's music master,'
she said. ' She will never take servants with a
character.'

'Character for what?' asked Horace. 'So-
briety?'

'She was at the opera three nights ago, but
blind drunk, though you mustn't repeat that.
I'm told she had her tiara upsidedown with the
points over her forehead. Alice Chignonette,
as I call her, was with her, asmall horse-hair bun

THE POISON OF ASPS

glued with seccotine to the back of her head.
She hadn't got any clothes on, but was slightly
distempered.'

' She always is slightly distempered, except
when she holds four aces and four queens, and
has seen the whole of her opponent's hand so
that she knows whether to finesse or not. And
is it true that the Weasel has stopped her allow-
ance?'

' Yes, he gave her a coat of dyed rabbit-skins
with a card pour prendre congt, and a second-
class ticket to Milwaukee where he first found
her on the sidewalkee. What people get into
society now ! Large bare shoulders, a perpetual
cold in the head and the manners of a Yahoo are
a sufficient passport. One can't go anywhere
without running into them. Not a soul would
speak to her at Milwaukee so she came to Lon-
don for whitewash.'

' And distemper.'

' She brought that with her. The Weasel
carried it in his grip-sack.'

Horace took an enamelled cigarette-case out
of his pocket and lit a cigarette that smelt of
musk.

' I saw Lily Broomsgrove to-day/ he said.
' She has become slightly broader than she is
81 F

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

long.'

* Her conversation always was. It consists of
seven improper adjectives and one expletive.
That is whyshe is sopopular. Shecanbeeasily
understood.'

* She seemed to have an understanding with
Pip Rippington. He was enclosed.'

* He ought to be. Haven't you heard? That
golf club hestarted, you know. Apparently golf
was a terminological inexactitude. I suppose it
will all be common property soon, so I may as
well tell you.'

Mrs. Deal try proceeded to tell them, and all
the little asps hissed with pleasure. . . .

Now there was very little truth in all that Mrs.
Dealtry had been saying, and perhaps none at
all in Horace Campbell's contribution, yet while
each of them really knew the other was a liar,
each drank it all in with the utmost avidity. Such
malice as there was about them was completely
impotent malice: it could not possibly matter
to Pip Rippington, for instance, whoever he was,
that Mrs. Dealtry and Horace had been in vent-
ing stories about him. That he had founded a
golf club was perfectly true ; that Mrs. Dealtry
had not been welcomed as a member of it was
true also, though there was aneedlesssufpressio

THE POISON OF ASPS

veri about this fact, as everybody present was
perfectly aware of it. But it amused them in some
rancid manner to vent spleen, just as it perhaps
amuses asps to bite. Only, and here was one of
Time's revenges, nobody ever cared what either
of them said. To throw mud enough is proverbi-
ally supposed to ensure the sticking of some of
it, but in the case of them and those like them,
the proverb was falsified. They had said that
sort of thing too often and too emphatically for
any one to attach the smallest importance to it;
it was as if their victims had been inoculated for
the poison of asps, and suffered no subsequent
inconvenience from the bite. No one thought
of bringing the laws about libel into play over
them, anymore than people think about invok-
ing the protection of those laws against a taxi-
driver who compensates himself in compliments
for the tip he has not received. If they have
any sense they get themselves into their houses
and leave the vituperative driver outside. That
is just what decent people did with Horace
Campbell. He isoutside still, biting the paving-
stones.

The pity of it all istheappallingwasteamong
asps of brains, inventive faculty, and humour.
If only their gifts were used to some laudable or

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

even only innocent purpose, the world ingeneral
would gain a great deal of entertainment, and
the asps of the popularity and success that they
secretly crave for. As it is, some sort of moral
ptomaine has infected them, some invasion of
microbes that turns their wit into poison. What-
soever things areloathsome, whatsoeverthings
are of ill report, they think of those things. All
their wit, too, goes to waste : nobody cares two
straws what they say, and the bitten are pathetic-
ally unconscious of having received any injury
whatever. That fact, perhaps, if they could
thoroughly realise it, might draw their fangs.

THE SEA-GREEN

INCORRUPTIBLE

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER FIVE
THE SEA-GREEN
INCORRUPTIBLE

CONSTANCE LADYWHITTLEMERE
lives in a huge gloomy house in the very centre
of May fair, has a majestic appearance, and is
perfectly ready for the Day of Judgment to come
whenever it likes. From the time when she
learned French in the school-room (she talks
it with a certain sonorous air, as if she was
preaching a sermon in a cathedral) and played
Diabelli's celebrated duet in D with the same
gifted instructress, she has always done her
duty in every state of life. If she sat down to
think, she could not hit upon any point in which
she has not invariably behaved like a Christian
and a lady (particularly a lady). Yet she is not
exactly Pharisaical; she never enumerates even
in her own mind her manifold excellences,
simply because they are so much a matter of
course with her. And that is precisely why she
is so perfectly hopeless. She expects it of her-
self to do her duty, and behave as a lady should
behave, and she never has the smallest misgiv-
ing as to her complete success in living up to
this ideal. That being so, she does not give it
another thought, knowing quite well that, who-

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

ever else may do doubtful or disagreeable things,
Constance Whittlemere will move undeviat-
ingly on in her flawless courses, just as the moon,
withoutany diminution of her light and serenity,
looks down on slums or battle-fields, strewn with
the corpses of the morally or physically slain.
And Lady Whittlemere, like the moon, does
not even think of saying, ' Poor things ! ' She is
much too lunar.

At the age of twenty- two (to trace her distress-
ing history ) her mother informed her, at the close
of her fourth irreproachable London season,
that she was going to marry Lord Whittlemere.
She was very glad to hear it, for he was com-
pletely congenial to her, though, even if she had
been very sorry to hear it, her sense of duty
would probably have led her to do as she was
told. But having committed that final act of
filial obedience, she realised that she had a duty
to perform to herself in the person of the new
Lady Whittlemere, and climbed up on to a lofty
four-square pedestal of her own. Her duty to-
wards herself was as imperative as her duty to-
wards Miss Green had been, when she learned
theDiabelli duet in D, and was no doubt derived
from the sense of position that she, as her hus-
band's wife, enjoyed. Yet perhaps she hardly

SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE

'enjoyed' it, for it was not in her nature to en-
joy anything. She had a perfectly clear idea,
as always, of what her own sense of fitness en-
tailed on her, and she diditrigidly. 'TheThing/
in fact, was her rule in life. Just as it was The
Thing to obey her governess, and obey her
mother, so, when she blossomed out into wife-
hood, The Thing was to be a perfect and com-
plete Lady Whittlemere. Success, as always,
attended her conscientious realisation of this.
Luckily (or unluckily, since her hope of salva-
tion was thereby utterly forfeited) she had mar-
ried a husband whose general attitude towards
life, whose sense of duty and hidebound instincts
equalled her own, and they lived together, after
that literal solemnisation of holy matrimony in
St. Peter's, Eaton Square, for thirty-four years
in unbroken harmony. They both ofthem had an
unassailable sense of their own dignity, never
disagreed on any topic under the sun, and saw
grow up round them a copious family of plain,
solid sons and comely daughters, none of whom
caused their parents a single moment's salutary
anxiety. The three daughters, amply downed,
got married into stiff mahogany families at an
earlyage,and the sons continued to prop up the
conservative interests of the nation by becom-

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

ing severally (i. ) asoldier, (ii. ) a clergyman, (iii. )
a member of Parliament, (iv. ) adiplomatist, and
they took into all these liberal walks of life the
traditions and proprieties of genuine Whittle-
meres. They were all Honourables, and all
honourable, and all dull, and all completely con-
scious of who they were. Nothing could have
been nicer.

For these thirty -four years, then, Lady
Whittlemereand her husband lived together in
harmony and exquisite expensive pomposity.
Had Genesis been one of the prophetical books,
their existence might be considered as adum-
brated by that of Adam and Eve in the Garden
of Eden. Only there wasnoserpent of any kind,
and their greathousein shelter of the Wiltshire
downs had probably a far pleasanter climate
than that of Mesopotamia. Their sons grew up
plain but strong, they all got into the cricket
Eleven at Eton, and had no queer cranky lean-
ings towards vegetarianism like Abel, or to
homicide like Cain, while the daughters until
the time of their mahogany marriages grew
daily more expert in the knowledge of how to
be Whittlemeres. Three months of the year
they spent in London, three more in their large
property in the Highlands of Scotland, and the

SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE

remaining six were devoted to Home Life at
Whittlemere, where thehuntingseasonand the
shooting season with their large solid parties
ushered in the Old English Christmas, and were
succeeded.by the quietness of Lent. Then after
Easter the whole household, from major-domo
to steward's-room boy, went second-class to
London, while for two days Lord and Lady
Whittlemere ' picnicked ' as they called it at
Whittlemere, with only his lordship's valet and
her ladyship's maid, and the third and fourth
footmen, and the first kitchen-maid and the still-
room maid and one housemaid to supply their
wants, and made their state entry in the train
of their establishment to Whittlemere House,
Belgrave Square, where they spent May, June,
and July.

But while they were in the country no dis-
traction consequent on hunting or shooting par-
ties diverted them from their mission in life,
which was to behave like Whittlemeres. About
two hundred and thirty years ago, it is true, a
certain Lord Whittlemere had had ' passages/
so to speak, with a female who was not Lady
Whittlemere, but since then the whole efforts
of the family had been devoted to wiping out
this deplorable lapse. Wet or fine, hunting and

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

shooting notwithstanding, Lord Whittlemere
gave audience every Thursday to his estate-
manager, who laid before him accounts and sub-
mitted reports. Nothing diverted him from his
duty, anymore than it did from distributing the
honours of his shooting lunches among the big
farmer-tenants of the neighbourhood. There
was a regular cycle of these, and duly Lord
Whittlemere with his guests lunched (the lunch
in its entirety being brought out in hampers
from The House) at Farmer Jones's, and Far-
mer Smith's, and Farmer Robertson's, compli-
mented Mrs. Jones, Smith, and Robertson on
the neatness of their gardens and the rosy-
facedness of their children, and gave them each
a pheasant or a hare. Similarly whatever High-
nesses and Duchesses were staying at The
House, Lady Whittlemere went every Wed-
nesday morning to the Mothers' Meeting atthe
Vicarage, and every Thursday afternoon to pay
a call in rotation on three of the lodgekeepers'
and tenants' wives. This did not bore her in
the least : nothing in the cold shape of duty
ever bored her. Conjointly they went to church
on Sunday morning, where Lord Whittlemere
stood up before the service began and prayed in-
to his hat, subsequently reading the lessons, and

SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE

giving a sovereign into the plate, while Lady
Whittlemere, after a choir practice on Saturday
afternoon, played the organ. It was the custom
for the congregation to wait in their pews till
they had left the church, exactly as if it was in
honour of Lord and Lady Whittlemere that
they had assembled here. This impression was
borne out by the fact that as The Family walked
down the aisle the congregation rose to their
feet Only the footman who was on duty that
day preceded their exit, and he held the door
of the landau open until Lady Whittlemere and
three daughters had got in. Lord Whittlemere
and such sons as were present then took off their
hats to their wife, mother, sisters and daughters
and strode home across the Park.

And as if this was not enough propriety for
one day, every Sunday evening the vicar of the
parish came to dine with the family, directly
after evening service. He was bidden to come
straight back from evensong without dressing,
and in order to make him quite comfortable Lord
Whittlemere never dressed on Sunday even-
ing, and made a point of reading the Guardian
and the Church Family Newspaper in the in-
terval between tea and dinner, so as to be able
to initiate Sabbatical subjects. This fortunate
93

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

clergyman was permitted to say grace both be-
fore and after meat, and Lord Whittlemere al-
ways thanked him for ' looking in on us.' To
crown all he invariably sent him two pheasants
and a hare during the month of November and
an immense cinnamon turkey at Christmas.

In this way Constance Whittlemere's mar-
ried life was just the flower of her maiden bud.
The same sense of duty as had inspired her
school-room days presided like some wooden-
eyed Juggernaut over her wifehood, and all her
freedom from any sort of worry or anxiety for
these thirty-four years served but to give her
a shell to her soul. She became rounded and
water-tight, she got to be embedded in the jelly
of comfort and security and curtseying lodge-
keepers' wives, and ' yes -my -lady '-Sunday-
Schools. Such rudiments of humanity as she
might possibly have once been possessed of
shrivelled like a devitalised nut-kernel, and,
when at the end of these thirty-four years her
husband died, she was already too proper, too
shell-bound to be human any longer. N aturally
his death was an extremely satisfactory sort of
death, and there was no sudden stroke, nor any
catching of vulgar disease. He had a bad cold
on Saturday, and, with a rising temperature, in-

SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE

sisted on going to church on Sunday. Notcon-
tent with that, in the pursuance of perfect duty
he went to the stables, as usual, on Sunday af-
ternoon, and fed his hunters with lumpsof sugar
and carrots. It is true that he sent the second
footman down to the church about the time of
evensong, to say that he was exceedingly un-
well, and would have to forgo the pleasure of
having Mr. Armine to dinner, but the damage
was already done. He developed pneumonia,
lingered a decorous week, and then succumbed.
All was extremely proper.

It is idle to pretend that his wife felt any
sense of desolation, for she was impervious to
everything except dignity. But she decided
to call herself Constance Lady Whittlemere,
rather than adopt the ugly name of Dowager.
There was a magnificent funeral, and she was
left very well off.

Le Roiest mort: Vivele Roi : Captain Lord
Whittlemere took the reins of government in-
to his feudal grasp, and his mother with four
rows of pearls for her life, two carriages and a
pair of carriage horses and a jointure of /"6ooo
a year entered into the most characteristicphase
of her existence. She was fifty-six years old, and
since she proposed to live till at least eighty,
95

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

she bought the lease of a great chocolate-col-
oured house in May fair with thirty years to run,
for it would be very tiresome to have to turn
out at the age of seventy-nine. As befitted her
station, it was very large and gloomy and digni-
fied, and had five best spare bedrooms, which
was just five more than she needed, since she
never asked anybody to stay with her except
her children's governess, poor Miss Lyall, for
whom a dressing-room was far more suitable :
Miss Lyall would certainly be more used to a
small room than a large one. She came origin-
ally to help Lady Whittlemere to keep her pro-
mise as set forth in the Morning Post to an-
swer the letters of condolence that had poured
in upon her in her bereavement, but before that
gigantic task was over, Lady Whittlemere had
determined togive herapermanent home here,
in other words, to secure for herself someone
who was duly conscious of the greatness of
Whittlemeres and would read to her or talk to
her, drive with her, and fetch and carry for her.
She did not propose to give Miss Lyall any re-
muneration for her services, as is usual in the
case of a companion, for it was surely remunera-
tion enough to provide her with a comfortable
home and all found, while Miss Lyall's own pro-

SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE

perty of ^100 a year would amply clothe her,
and enable her to lay something by. Lady
Whittlemere thought that everybody should
lay something by, even if, like herself, nothing
but the total extinction of the British Empire
would deprive her of the certainty of having
,£6000 a year as long as she lived. But thrift
being a duty, she found that ^5000 a year en-
abled her to procure every comfort and luxury
that her limited imagination could suggest to
her, and instead of spending the remaining
;£iooo a year on chanty or things she did not
want, she laid it by. Miss Lyall, in the same
way could be neat and tidy on ^"50 a year, and
lay by ^50 more.

For a year of mourning Constance Whittle-
mere lived in the greatest seclusion, and when
that year was out she continued to do so. She
spent Christmas at her son's house, where there
was always a pompous family gathering, and
stayed for a fortnight at Easter in a hotel at
Hastings for the sake of sea-breezes. She spent
August in Scotland, again with her son, and
September at Buxton, where further to fortify
her perfect health, she drank waters and went
for two walks a day with Miss Lyall, whose
hotel bills she, of course, was answerable for.
97 G

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

Miss Lyall similarly accompanied her to Hast-
ings, but was left behind in London at Christ-
mas and during August.

A large establishment was of course necess-
ary in order to maintain the Whittlemere tradi-
tion. Half-a-dozen times in the season Lady
Whittlemere had a dinner-party which assem-
bled at eight, and broke up with the utmost
punctuality at half-past ten, but otherwise the
two ladies were almost invariably alone at break-
fast, lunch, tea, and dinner. But a cook, a kit-
chen-maid, and a scullery-maid were indispens-
able to prepare those meals, a still-room maid
to provide cakes and rolls for tea and break-
fast, a butler and two footmen to serve them,
a lady's maid to look after Lady Whittlemere,
a steward's-room boy to wait on the cook, the
butler, and the lady's maid, two housemaids to
dust and tidy, a coachman to drive Lady Whit-
tlemere, and a groom and a stable-boy to look
after the horses and carriages. It was imposs-
ible to do with less, and thus fourteen lives were
spent in maintaining the Whittlemere dignity
downstairs, and Miss Lyall did the same up-
stairs. With such an establishment Lady Whit-
tlemere felt that she was enabled to do her duty
to herself, and keep the flag of tradition flying.

SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE

But the merest tyro in dignity could see that this
could not be done with fewer upholders, and
sometimes Lady Whittlemere had grave doubts
whether she ought not to have a hall-boy as
well. One of the footmen or the butler of course
opened the front-door as she went in and out,
and the hall -boy with a quantity of buttons
would stand up as she passed him with fixed
set face, and then presumably sit down again.
The hours of the day were mapped out with a
regularity borrowed from the orbits of the stars.
At half-past nine precisely Lady Whittlemere
entered the dining-room where Miss Lyall was
waiting for her, and extended to her companion
the tips of four cool fingers. Breakfast was eaten
mostly in silence,and if there were any letters for
her (there usually were not) Lady Whittlemere
read them, and as soon as breakfast was over an-
swered them. After these literary labours were
accomplished, Miss Lyall read items from the
Morning Post aloud, omitting the leading ar-
ticles but going conscientiously through the
smaller paragraphs. Often Lady Whittlemere
would stop her. * Lady Cammerham is back in
town is she ? ' she would say. ' She was a Miss
Pulton, a distant cousin of my husband's. Yes,
Miss Lyall?'
99

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

This reading of the paper lasted till eleven,
at which hour, if fine, the two ladies walked in
the Green Park till half-past. I f wet, they looked
out of the window to see if it was going to clear.
At half-past eleven the landau was announced
(shut if wet, open if fine), and they drove round
and round and round and round the Park till
one. At one they returned and retired till half-
past, when the butler and two footmen gave
them lunch. At lunch the butler said, * Any
orders for the carriage, my lady?' and every
day Lady Whittlemere said, ' The victoria at
half-past two. Is there anywhere particular you
would like to go, M iss Lyall ? ' M iss Lyall always
tried to summon up her courage at this, and
say that she would like to go to the Zoological
Gardens. She had done so once, but that had
not been a great success, for Lady Whittlemere
had thought the animals very strange and rude.
So since then she always replied :

' No, I think not, thank you, Lady Whittle-
mere.'

They invariably drove for two hours in the
summer and for an hour and a half in the winter,
and this change of hours began when Lady
Whittlemere came back from H arrogate at the
end of September, and from Hastings after

100

SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE

Easter. Little was said during the drive, it
being enough for Lady Whittlemere to sit very
straight up in her seat and look loftily about her,
so that any chance passer-by who knew her by
sight would be aware that she was behaving as
befitted Constance Lady Whittlemere. Oppo-
site her, not by her side, sat poor Miss Lyall,
ready with a parasol or a fur boa or a cape or
something in case her patroness felt cold, while
on the box beside Brendon the coachman sat the
other footman, who had not been out round and
round and round the Park in the morning, and
so in the afternoon went down Piccadilly and up
Regent Street and through Portland Place and
round and round Regent's Park, and looked on
to the back of the two fat lolloping horses which
also had not been out that morning. There they
all went, the horses and Brendon and William
and Miss Lyall in attendance on Constance
Lady Whittlemere, as dreary and pompous and
expensive and joy less a carriage-load as could be
seen in all London, with the exception, possibly,
of Black Maria.

They returned home in time for Miss Lyall
to skim through the evening paper aloud, and
then had the tea with the cakes and the scones
from the still-room. After tea Miss Lyall read
101

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

for two hours some book from the circulating
library, while Lady Whittlemere did wool work.
These gloomy tapestries were made into screens
and chair-seats and cushions, and annually one
(the one begun in the middle of November) was
solemnly presented to Miss Lyall on the day
that Lady Whittlemere went out of town for
Christmas. And annually she said :

'Oh, thank you, Lady Whittlemere; is it
really for me ? '

It was : and she was permitted to have it
mounted as she chose at her own expense.

At 7. 15 P.M. a sonorous gong echoed through
the house; Miss Lyall finished the sentence she
was reading, and Lady Whittlemere put her
needle into her work, and said it was time to
dress. At dinner, though both were teetotallers,
wine was offered them by the butler, and they
both refused it, and course after course was pre-
sented to them by the two footmen in white
stockings and Whittlemere livery and cotton
gloves. Port also was put on the table with
dessert, this being the bottle which had been
opened at the last dinner-party, and when Lady
Whittlemere had eaten a gingerbread and drunk
half a glass of water they went, not into the morn-
ing-room which they had used during the day,

102

SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE

but the large drawing-room upstairs with the
Louis Seize furniture and the cut-glass chande-
liers. E very evening it was all ablaze with lights,
and the fire roared up the chimney : the tables
were bright with flowers, and rows of chairs
were set against the wall. Majestically Lady
Whittlemere marches into it, followed by Miss
Lyall, and there she plays patience till 10.30
while Miss Lyall looks on with sycophantic con-
gratulations at her success, and murmured sym-
pathy if the cards are unkind. At i o. 30 Brank-
somethe butler throws open the door and a foot-
man brings in a tray of lemonade and biscuits.
This refreshment is invariably refused by both
ladies, and at eleven the house is dark.

Now the foregoing catalogue of events accu-
rately describes Lady Whittlemere's day, and
in it is comprised the sum of the material that
makes up her mental life. But it is all enacted
in front of the background that she is Lady
Whittlemere. The sight of the London streets,
with their million comedies and tragedies,
arouses in her no sympathetic or human current :
all she knows is that Lady Whittlemere is driv-
ing down Piccadilly. When the almond blossom
comes out in Regent's Park, and the grass is

yellow with the flowering of the spring bulbs,

103

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

her heart never dances with the daffodils ; all
that happens is that Lady Whittlemere sees
that they are there. She subscribes to no chari-
ties, for she is aware that her husband left her
this ample jointure for herself, and she spends
such part of it as she does not save on herself,
on her food and her house and her horses and
the fifteen people whose business it is to make
her quite comfortable. She has no regrets and
no longings, because she has always lived per-
fectly correctly, and does not want anything.
She is totally without friends or enemies, and she
is never surprised or enthusiastic or vexed.
About six times a year, on the day preceding one
of her dinners, Miss Lyall does not read aloud
after tea, but puts the names of her guests on
pieces of cardboard, and makes a map of the
table, while the evening she leaves London for
H astings or Scotland she stops playing patience
at ten, in order to get a good long night before
her journey. She does the same on her arrival
in town again so as to get a good long night after
her journey. She takes no interest in politics,
music, drama, or pictures, but goes to the private
view of the Academy as May comes round,
because The Thing recommends it. And when
she comes to die, the life-long consciousness of

104

SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE

The Thing will enable her to meet the King of
Terrors with fortitude and composure. H e will
not frighten her at all.

And what on earth will the Recording Angel
find to write in his book about her? He cannot
put down all those drives round the Park, and
all those games of patience, and really there is
nothing else to say. . . .

THE ETERNALLY

UNCOMPROMISED

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SIX
THE ETERNALLY UN-
COMPROMISED

WINIFRED AMES WAS THE YOUNG-

est of a family of six girls, none of whom an in-
dustrious mother had managed to foist on to
incautious husbands. They were all plain and
square and strong (like carpets of extra width),
and when seated at the family table in Warwick
Square with their large firm mother at one end
and a mild diminutive father at the other, re-
sembled a Non-Commissioned Officers' mess.
But Winifred was an anomaly, a freak in this
array of stalwart maidenhood : there was some-
thing pretty about her, and, no less marked a
difference between her and her sisters, some-
thing distinctly silly about her. Florence and
Mary and Diana and Jane and Queenie were
all silent and swarthy and sensible, Winifred
alone in this barrack of a house represented the
lighter side of life. A secret sympathy perhaps
existed between her and her father, but they had
little opportunity to conspire, for he was packed
off to the City immediately after breakfast, and
on his return given his dinner, and subsequently
a pack of cards to play patience with.
109

THE ETERNALLY

She had a certain faculty of imagination, and
her feathery little brains were constantly and
secretly occupied in weaving exotic and senti-
mental romances round herself. If in her walks
she received the cas.ua! homage of a stare from
a passer-by in the street, she flamed with un-
substantial surmises. Positively there was no-
thing too silly for her ; if the passer-by was
shabby and disordered she saw in him an ec-
centric millionaire or amysterious baronet, cast-
ing glances of respectful adoration at her ; if
he was well-dressed and pleasant to the eye she
saw — well, she saw another one. There would
be a wild and fevered courtship, at the end of
which, in a mist of rice and wedding-bells, she
would enter the magnificent Rolls-Royce and
drive away, a lady of title, between the lines of
the guard of honour furnished by her unfortu-
nate sisters.

She kept these lurid imaginings strictly to
herself, aware that neither Florence nor Mary
nor Diana nor Jane nor Queenie would extend
a sympathetic hearing to them. As far as that
went she was sensible enough, for her imagin-
ation, lurid as it was, was right in anticipating
a very flat and stern reception for them if she
confided them to her sisters. But since she never

UNCOMPROMISED

ran the risk of having them dispersed by home-
ly laughter, her day-dreams became more and
more real to her, and at the age of twenty-two
she was, in a word, silly enough for anything.

Then the amazing thing happened. A;real
baronet, a concrete, middle-aged, wealthy, deli-
cate baronet who was accustomed to dine at
the Non-Commissioned Officers' mess once or
twice in the season, proposed to her, and it ap-
peared that all her imaginings had not been
so silly after all. She accepted him without the
smallest hesitation, feeling that 'faith had van-
ished into sight.' Besides, her mother was quite
firm on the subject.

Sir Gilbert Falcon (such was his prodigious
name) was a hypochondriac of perfectly ami-
able disposition, and his Winny-pinny, as he
fatuously called her, was at first extremely
contented. He treated her like a toy, when he
was well enough to pay any attention to her ;
and in the manner of a little girl with her doll, he
loved dressing her up in silks and jewels, with
an admiration that was half child-like, half senile,
and completely unmanly. It pleased his vanity
that he, a little, withered, greenish man, should
have secured so young and pretty a wife, and
finding that green suited her, gave her his best
in

THE ETERNALLY

jade necklace, the beads of which were perfect-
ly matched, and represented years of patient
collecting. He gave her also for her lifelong
adornment the famous Falcon pearls, which
pleased her much more. She wore the jade by
day, and the pearls in the evening, and he would
totter after her, when he felt well enough, into
the Rolls-Royce (for the Rolls-Royce had come
true also) and take her to dine at the Savoy.
Afterwards, when he had drunk his tonic, which
he had brought with him in a little bottle, he
often felt sufficiently robust to go on to a revue,
where he took a box. There he would sit, with a
shawl wrapped round his knees, and hold her
hand, and tell her that none of the little ladies
on the stage were half so enchanting as his
Winny-pinny.

Of course he could not indulge in such de-
bauches every night, and the evenings were
many when they dined at home and he went to
bed at half-past nine. Then when he was warmly
tucked up with a hot- water bottle and an eider-
down quilt, he would like her to sit with him, and
read to him till he got drowsy. Then he would
say,Tmgettingnear Snooze-land, Winny: shall
we just talk a little, until you see me dropping
off? And then, my dear, if you want to go out to

112

UNCOMPROMISED

some ball or party, by all means go, and dance
away. SuchastronglittleWinny-pinnytodance
all night, and be a little sunbeam all day — ' And
his wrinkled eyelids would close, and his mouth
fall open, and he would begin to snore. On which
his Winny-pinny gently got up, and after shad-
ing the light from the bed, left the room.

At first she was vastly contented. Being a
quite unreal little creature herself, it seemed
delicious that her husband should call her his
fairy and his Winny-pinny and his sunbeam,
and only require of her little caresses and butter-
fly-kisses and squeezes. All the secret senti-
mental imaginings of her girlhood seemed to be
translated into actual life; the world was very
much on the lines of the day-dreams she had
never ventured to tell her sisters. But by de-
grees fresh horizons opened, and her imagina-
tion, reinforced by continuous reading of all the
sentimental trash that she could find in circulat-
ing libraries, began to frame all sorts of new ad-
ventures for herself. Just as, in her girlhood,
she had had visions of baronets and millionaires
casting glances of hopeless adoration at her in
the streets, so now, when she had got her baronet
all right, she still clung to the idea of others
looking at her with eyes of silent longing. She
113 H

THE ETERNALLY

decided (in a strictly imaginative sense) to have
a lover who pined for her.

Now with her pretty meaningless face, pink
and white, with her large china-blue eyes, and
yellow hair, it was but natural that there were
many men who looked with interest and admir-
ation at her, and were very well content to sit and
talk to her in secluded corners at the balls to
which she so often went alone. After a few days'
indecision she settled that the hopeless and pin-
ing swain (for she was determined to be a faith-
ful wife, that being part of the romance) should
be Joe Bailey, a pale and willowy young soldier,
who spent most of the day at the manicurist and
most of the night in London ball-rooms. From
the first time she had seen him, so she now told
herself, having adopted him as her lover, she
had known that there was some secret sympathy
between them ; a chord (this came out of the
circulating library) vibrated between their two
souls. His pallor was instantly accounted for,
so too was the tenderness with which he held
her hand when they danced together : in spite
of his noble reticence his soul had betrayed its
secret to her.

After a week or two of noble reticence on his
part, she came to the conclusion that she must

114

UNCOMPROMISED

also pine for him, else there would be no nobility
in her fixed determination to be faithful to her
husband. She flattered herself that she was
getting on nicely with this, when the most dread-
ful thing happened, for Joe Bailey became en-
gaged to somebody quite different, a real live
girl with a great appetite, whose vocabulary was
chiefly confined to the word * top-hole.' Wini-
fred herself was 'top-hole, 'so was Joe Bailey, so
were dogs, golfin' and dancin'. Anything that
was not 'top-hole' was 'beastly.'

This was very disconcerting, and seeking
safety in numbers Winifred decided to have
quantities of lovers, for it was not likely that they
should all go and marry somebody else. To en-
sure greater security she included in her list
several married men, who had met her too late.
Thus amply provided, she plunged into a new
set of adventures.

The situation thus created was truly thrilling,
and the thrill was augmented by amorous little
sallies on her husband's part. His nerve tonic
suited him, and about this time he used often to
go out to dinner with her, and even come on for
an hour to a ball, where he sat in a corner, feeding
his vitality with the sight of all the youth and
energy that whirled in front of him. He liked

THE ETERNALLY

seeing his Winny-pi nny enjoy herself, and gave
little squeals of delight when he saw her dancing
(her dancing was really admirable) with a series
of vigorous young men. Then as they drove
away together (for when he went to a ball with
her, she had to come away with him) he would
squeeze her hand and say :

'Who was that last young man my Winny-
pinny danced with ? And who was it in the dance
before who looked at her so fondly ? And who
was it she sat out with all that time ? But her old
man was watching her: oh, he had his eye on
her!'

Here then was the thrill of thrills in the new
situation. Gilbert had noticed how many men
were in love with her. And before long she
added to herself the almost inevitable corollary,
1 Gilbert is so terribly jealous.'

But in spiteof Gilbert's terrible jealousy, and
the suffocating crowds of lovers, nothing par-
ticular happened. The lovers all remained nobly
reticent, and a fresh desire entered her circul-
ating-library soul. She must get talked about :
people other than Gilbert must notice the fatal
spell that she exercised broadcast over the
adoring males of London : she must get com-
promised, somehow or other she must get

116

UNCOMPROMISED

compromised.

According to the circulating library there
was nothing easier. A note with a few passion-
ate words addressed to her had only to be picked
up by somebody else's wife, or somebody else's
husband had only to be found on his knees at
midnight in her boudoir (a word she affected)
and the thing was done. But, as always, it was
the premier pas quicodte, and these enchanting
situations, she supposed, had to be led up to.
A total stranger would not go on his knees at
midnight in her boudoir, or leave passionate
notes about ; she had to rouse in another the
emotion on which were built those heavenly
summits, and begin, so to speak, in the valleys.

At this point a wonderful piece of luck came
her way. The faithless Joe Bailey had his
engagement broken off. It was generally sup-
posed that the top-hole girl found him beastly,
but Winifred knew better. She felt convinced
thathe had broken it off on her account, finding
that passionate celibacy was the only possible
condition for one who had met her too late.
Here was an avenue down which compromise
might enter, and when in answer to a broad
hint of hers, he asked her to play golf with him
at Richmond, she eagerly consented.
117

THE ETERNALLY

The plan was that he should lunch with Sir
Gilbert and herself, and Sir Gilbert held out
hopes that if it was not too hot, he would drive
down with them, sit on the verandah, or perhaps
walk a hole or two with them, and drive back
again at the conclusion of their game. But these
hopes were shattered or — should it be said —
more exciting hopes were gloriously mended,
for an inspection of the thermometer convinced
him that it would be more prudent to stay in-
doors till the heat of the day waned. So she
and Joe Bailey drove off together in the Rolls-
Royce.

She looked anxiously round as they left the
door in Grosvenor Square.

' I wonder if it was wise of us to come in this
car,' she said, timidly.

Bailey looked critically round.

* Why not,' he said rather stupidly. * Quite
a good car, isn't it ? '

Clearly he was not awake to the danger.

' Oh, yes,' she said, * but people are so ill-
natured. They might think it odd for you and
me to be driving about in Gilbert's car.'

He was still odiously obtuse.

' Well, they couldn't expect us to walk all the
way to Richmond, could they ? ' he said.

118

UNCOMPROMISED

To her great delight, Winifred saw at this
moment a cousin of her husband's, and bowed
and waved her hand and kissed her fingers. She
sat very much back as she did this so that Florrie
Falcon, who had a proverbially unkind tongue,
could clearly see the young man who sat by her
side. That made her feel a little better, for it was
even more important that other people should
see her in the act of doing compromising things,
than that he with whom she compromised her-
self should be aware of the fact. During their
game again they came across several people
whom Bailey or she knew, who, it was to be
hoped, would mention the fact that they had been
seen together.

It was adistinctdisappointmentto poor Wini-
fred that this daring escapade seemed to have
attracted so little notice, but she did not despair.
A further glorious opportunity turned up indeed
only a day or two later, for her husband was
threatened with what he called a bronchial cat-
arrh (more usually known as a cough) and de-
parted post-haste to spend a couple of days at
Brighton. Winifred, so it happened, was rather
full of engagements, and he readily fell in with
her wish to stop in town, and not to accompany
him. So, the moment she had ceased kissing her
119

THE ETERNALLY

finger-tips to him as he drove away in the Rolls-
Royce with all the windows hermetically closed,
she ran backinto the house, andplannedadaring
scheme. She telephoned to Lady Buckhamp-
ton's, where she was dining and dancing that
night; to say her husband had this tiresome
bronchial catarrh, and that she was going down
to Brighton with him, and, while the words were
scarcely spoken, telephoned to Joe Bailey ask-
ing him to dine with her. He accepted, sug-
gesting that they should go to the first-night at
the Criterion after dinner, and then go on to
the Buckhamptons' dance.

A perfect orgy of compromising situations
swam before her, more thrilling even than the
famous kneeling scene in her boudoir at mid-
night. She would go to the Criterion with her
unsuspecting lover, where certainly there would
be many people who would go on to the Buck-
hampton dance afterwards. They would all
have seenherand Joe Bailey together, and even
if they did not, he in the babble of ball-room
conversation would doubtless popularise the
fact of their having been there together. He
might even tell Lady Buckhampton, whose in-
vitation, on the plea of absence at Brighton
with her husband, she had excused herself from,

120

UNCOMPROMISED

about this daring adventure.

The mere material performance of this even-
ing came up to the brilliance of its promise. All
sorts of people saw her and her companion, and
the play happening by divine fitness to be con-
cerned with a hero who backed out of his en-
gagement at the last moment because he loved
somebody else, Winifred could scarcely be ex-
pected not to turn blue eyes that swam with
sympathy on her poor Joe. But again this hope-
less young man did not understand, and whis-
pered to know if she wanted sixpenny- worth
of opera-glasses. He saw her home — this she
had not contemplated — and sat with her in the
barren boudoir, smoking a cigarette. Surely
now he would slide on to his knees ? But he
did not, and went to his ball. There he actually
told Lady Buckhampton that he had dined and
been to the play with Lady Falcon, and she
only laughed and said, ' Dear little Winny !
She told me some nonsense about going to
Brighton with her husband. How-de-dfo? How-
de-do? So nice of you to have come.'

Then it is true Winny almost despaired
of this particular lover. She, made one more
frantic effort when she met him next day at
lunch, and said, ' You must talk to your neigh-
121

THE ETERNALLY

hour more. People will notice,' but this only
had the effect of making him talk to his neigh-
bour, which was not what she meant.

She decided to give another lover a chance,
and selected H erbert Ashton, a somewhat older
man, who no doubt would understand her better.
Several encouraging circumstances happened
here, for her husband more than once remarked
on the frequency with which he came to the
house, and she thought one day that Lady Buck-
hampton cut her in the Park. This joy, it is
true, was of short duration, for Lady Buckhamp-
ton asked her to spend the week-end with them
next day, and she was forced to conclude that
the cut had not been an intentional one. But
it stimulated her to imagine a very touching
scene in which Herbert, when they were alone
together in the boudoir, was to say, * This is
killing me,' and fold her in his arms. For one
moment she would yield to his fervent embrace,
the next she would pluck herself from him and
say, ' Herbert, I am a married woman : we met
too late ! ' On which he would answer, ' Forgive
me, my dearest : I behaved like a cad.'

And then the most dreadful thing of all hap-
pened, for part, at any rate, of her imaginings
came true. She was with Herbert shortly after-

122

UNCOMPROMISED

wards in her boudoir, and in ordinary decent
response to a quantity of little sighs and glances
and glances away and affinity-gabble on her
part, he had given her a good sound proper
kiss. But it was real; it was as different as
possible from all the tawdry tinsel sentimental-
ities which she had for years indulged in, and
it simply terrified her. She gave one little
squeal, and instead of yielding for a moment to
his fervent embrace, and saying, 'Herbert, I
am a married woman, etc.,' cried, ' Oh, Mr.
Ashton ! ' which was very bald.

He looked at her completely puzzled. He
felt certain she meant him to kiss her, and had
done so.

' I'm sorry,' he said, ' I thought you wouldn't
mind.'

A dreadful silence overcharged with bathos
followed. Then recovering herself a little, she
remembered her part.

* You must go now,' she said faintly, with a
timid glance that was meant to convey the
struggle she was going through. But unfortu-
nately he only said * Right oh,' and went.

Since that day she has always retreated in
time to prevent anything real occurring. But
she cannot succeed in getting talked about in
123

connection with anybody. The instinct of Lon-
don generally, often at fault, is here perfectly
correct. She can't be compromised — no one
will believe anything against a woman so mild.
And all the time, in the clutch of her sentimental
temperament, she sees herself the heroine of
great romances. Lately she has been reading
Dante (in a translation) and feels that England
lacks someone like the mighty Florentine poet,
for his Beatrice is waiting for him. . . .

It is all rather sad for poor Winny-pinny.
It is as if she desired the rainbow that hangs
athwart the thundercloud. But ever, as faint
yet pursuing she attempts to approach, it recedes
with equal speed. Indeed, it is receding faster
than she pursues now, for her hair is getting to
be of dimmer gold, and the skin at the outer
corners of those poor eyes, ever looking out for
unreal lovers, is beginning faintly to suggest the
aspect of a muddy lane, when a flock of sheep
have walked over it, leaving it trodden and
dinted.

THE GRIZZLY KITTENS
CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER SEVEN
THE GRIZZLY KITTENS

A FOUNT OF PERENNIAL YOUTH-
fulness has been and will be the blessing and
curse of certain people's existence. Up to the
age of about thirty-five for a woman and round
about forty for a man, it is an admirable thing to
feel that the morning of life is still lingering in
rosy cloudlets about you, but when these austere
ages have been arrived at, it is wiser for those
who still behave like imperishable children to
recollect, impossible though they will find the
realisation of it without exercising patience and
determination, that, though their immortal souls
are doubtless imperishable, they are no longer
boys and girls. Otherwise the dreadful fate of
becoming grizzly kittens will soon lay ambushes
for them, and to be a grizzly kitten does not
produce at all the same impression as being an
imperishable child. Like Erin in the song and
King David in the psalm, they should remember
and consider the days of old, and attempt quietly
and constantly to do a little subtraction sum,
whereby they will ascertain how far the days
of old have receded from them. Their spring-
tide has ebbed a long way since then : they are
swimming in it no longer, they are not even
127

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

paddling, but they are standing just a little gaunt
and skinny high up on the beach, with wisps
of dry sea- weed whistling round their emaciated
ankles. Almost invariably those threatened
with grizzly kittenhood are spare and thin, for
this fact encourages the pathetic delusion that
they have youthful figures, and in a dim light, to
eyes that are losing their early pitilessness of
vision they doubtless seem slim and youthful
to themselves, though they rarely present this
appearance to each other. But it is very un-
common to find a stout grizzly kitten: amplitude
makes it impossible to skip about, and cannot be
so readily mistaken by its hopeful possessors for
youthful slimness.

Imperishable children, who are threatened
with grizzly kittenhood, are, like other children
and kittens, male and female. At this stage
great indulgence must be extended to them
whichever their sex may be, for their error is
based upon vitality, which, however misapplied,
is in itself the most attractive quality in the
world. That they have no sense of time is in
comparison a smaller consideration. For they
are always cheerful, always optimistic, and if,
at the age of forty, they have a slight tendency
to say that events of twenty years ago are

128

THE GRIZZLY KITTENS

shrouded in the mists of childhood and the nur-
sery, this is but an amiable failing, and one that
is far easier to overlook than many of the more
angular virtues. Of the two the female grizzly
kitten (in the early stages of the complaint) is
entitled to greater kindliness than her grizzly
brother, for the obvious reason that in the fair of
Mayfair the merry-go-round and the joy-wheel
slow down for women sooner than they do for
men. Thus the temptation to a woman of be-
having as if it was not slowing down, is greater
than to a man. It will go on longer for him ; he
has less excuse — since he has had a longer joy-
ride — for pretending that it is still quite at its
height of revolving giddiness. She — if she is
gifted with the amazing vitality which animates
grizzly kittens — can hardly help still screaming
and clapping herhandsandchanging hats, when
first the hurdy-gurdy and the whirling begin to
slacken, in order to persuade herself that they
are doing nothing of the sort. I f she is wise, she
will of course slip offthe joy- wheel and, like Mr.
Wordsworth, ' only find strength in what re-
mains behind.' But if she did that, the danger
of her grizzly kittenhood would beover. Pity her
then, when first the slowing-down process be-
gins, but give less pity to the man who will not
129 I

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

accept the comparatively kinder burden of his
middle-age. Besides, when the early stages of
grizzly kittenhood are past, the woman who still
clings toherskippings and her rheumatic antics
after blind-tassels has so much the harder gym-
nastics to perform.

Two sad concrete examples of grizzly-kitten-
hood, both in advanced stages, await our com-
miseration. Mrs. Begum (nee Adeline Arm-
strong) is the first. From her childhood the
world conspired to make a grizzly kitten of her,
and in direct contravention of the expressed
wishes ofhergodfatherandgodmother who said
she was to be Adeline, insisted on calling her
Baby. Baby Armstrong she accordingly re-
mained until the age of twenty-five, when she
became Baby Begum, and she has never got
further from that odious appellation, at her pre-
sent age of fifty-two, than being known as Babs,
while even now her mother, herself the grizzliest
of all existing kittens, calls her Baby still.

Babs appeared in Mayfairattheage of seven-
teen, and instantly took the town by storm, in
virtue of her authentic and audacious vitality.
She had the face of a Sir Joshua Reynolds angel,
the figure of a Botticelli one, the tongue of a
gamin, and the spirits of an everlasting carnival.

130

THE GRIZZLY KITTENS

Her laugh, the very sound of that delicious en-
joyment, set the drawing-room in a roar, and
her conversation the smoking-room, where she
was quite at home — there was never anyone so
complete as she, never such an apple of at-
tractiveness, of which all could have a slice. She
would ride in the Row of a morning, call the
policeman, who wanted to take her name on the
score of excessive velocity, ' Arthur dear,' and
remind him how she had danced in the cause
of police old-age pensions at Clerkenwell (which
was perfectly true), thus melting his austere
heart. Then, as like as not, she would get off
her horse at the far end of the ladies' mile, and
put on it an exhausted governess, with orders
to the groom to see her safe home to Bays water.
Then she would sit on the rail, ask a passer-by
for a cigarette, and hold a little court of adorers,
male and female alike, until her horse came back
again. She would, in rare intervals of fatigue,
go to bed about four o'clock in the morning, when
her mother was giving a ball in Prince's Gate,
and stand on the balcony outside her bedroom
in her nightgown, and talk to the remaining
guests as they left the house, shrieking good
wishes, and blowing kisses. Or if the fit so took
her, instead of going to bed she would change

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

her ball-dress for a riding-habit, go down to the
mews with Charlie or Tommy or Harry, or in-
deed with Bertha or Florrie or Madge (fitting
these latter up with other habits) and start for
a ride in the break of the summer morning, re-
turning hungry and dewy to breakfast. Where-
ever she went the world laughed with her ; she
enhaloed all she shone upon. Chiefly did she
shine upon Charlie Gordon, who, in the measure
of a man, was a like comet to herself. He was
some five years older than she, and they ex-
pected to marry each other when the fun became
less fast and furious. In the interval, among
other things, they had a swimming-race across
the Serpentine one early August morning, and
she won by two lengths. An angry Humane
Society boat jabbed at them with hooks in order
to rescue them. These they evaded.

Those whom Nature threatens with grizzly
kittenhood live too much on the surface to be
able to spare much energy for such engrossing
habits as falling in love, and when, at the age of
twenty-five she suddenly determined to marry
the small and silent Mr. Begum, nobody was sur-
prised and many applauded. She could not go
on swimming the Serpentine with Charlie Gor-
don, and it seemed equally unimaginable that

132

THE GRIZZLY KITTENS

she should marry a man with only ^2OOoayear
and no prospects of any sort or kind. She did
not imperatively want him, any more than he im-
peratively wanted her, andsince thatoneconclu-
sive reason for matrimony was absent, it did not
particularly matter whom she married, so long
as he was immensely wealthy, and of an indul-
gent temper. By nationality, Mr. Begum owed
about equal debts to Palestine, Poland, and
the Barbados, and since at this epoch Palestine
at any rate was in the ascendant over the roofs
of May fair it was thought highly suitable that
Baby Armstrong should become Baby Begum.
She had always called Charlie Gordon, 'dear,'
or * darling,' or ' fool,' and she explained it all to
him in the most illuminating manner.

'Darling, you quite understand, don't you ?'
she said, as she rode beside him one morning in
the Park. ' J ehoshaphat's a perfect dear, and he
suits me. Life isn't all beer and skittles, other-
wise I would buy some beer, and you would save
up to get a second-hand skittle alley, and there
we should be ! My dear, do look at that thing on
the chestnut coming down this way. Is it a goat
or isn't it? I think it's a goat. Oh don't be a fool,
dear, you needn't be a fool. Of course every-
body thought we were going to marry each other,
133

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

but what can matter less than what everybody
thinks ? And besides, I know quite well that you
haven't the slightest intention of getting broken-
hearted about me, and the only thing you mind
about is that I have shown I have not got a
broken heart about you. What really is of im-
portance is what I am to call Jehoshaphat. I
can't call him Jehu, because he doesn't do any-
thing furiously, and I can't call him " Fat," be-
cause he's thin, and there's nothing left!'

' I should call him " darling," then/ said
Charlie, who was still unconvinced by this fla-
grant philosophy, 'same as you call me.'

She looked at him almost regretfully.

' Oh, do be sensible,' she said. ' I know I'm
right: I feel I'm right. Get another girl. There
are lots of them, you know.'

Charlie had the most admirable temper.

'I'll take your advice,' he said. 'And, any-
how, I wish you the best of luck. I hope you'll
be rippingly happy. Come on, let's have a
gallop.'

Since then, years, as impatient novelists so
often inform us, passed. Babs's philosophy of
life was excellent as far as it went, and the only
objection to it was that it did not go far enough.
In spite of his vitality, Charlie did not, as a

134

THE GRIZZLY KITTENS

sensible young man should, see about getting
another girl ; for perhaps he was wounded a little
deeper than either he or Babs knew. The tra-
gedy about it all is that they both had the con-
stitution of grizzly kittens. He did not marry any
one else, nor did he live into his age as that
slowly increased upon him, and Mr. Begum got
asthma. This made him very tiresome and
wheezy, and the perpetual contact with senility
probably prevented Babs from growing into her
proper mould of increasing years. Her sense
of youth was constantly fed by her husband's
venerable habits; with him she always felt a
girl. And the ruthless decades proceeded in
their Juggernaut march, without her ever see-
ing the toppling car that now overhangs her,
stiffwith the wooden images of age. Wooden, at
any rate, they will seem to her when she fully per-
ceives them, and robbed of the graciousness and
wisdom that might have clothed and softened
them if only she had admitted their advent.

As it is, two pathetic figures confront us.
Charlie Gordon, that slim entrancing youth, is
just as slim (in fact slimmer in the wrong places)
as he ever was. But he is a shade less entranc-
ing, with his mincing entry into the assembling
party than he was twenty-five years ago. There

135

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

was no need for him to mince then, for his eager
footsteps carried him, as with Hermes-heels, on
the wings of youth. Now he takes little quick
steps, and thinks it is the same thing. He is just
as light and spry as ever (except when he is
troubled with lumbago) but he cannot see that
it is not the same thing. H e has not noticed that
his lean youthful jaw has a queer little fold in the
side of it, and if he notices it, he thinks it is a
dimple. He brushes his hair very carefully now,
not knowing that to the disinterested observer
the top of his head looks rather like music-paper,
with white gaps in between the lines, and that
it is quite obvious that he grows those thinning
locks very long on one side of his head (just
above the ear) and trains them in the manner of
an espaliered pear over the denuded bone where
once a plume used jauntily to erect itself. H e is
careful about them now, but once, not so very
long ago, he forgot how delicately trained were
those tresses, and went down to bathe with the
other boys of the house. They naturally came
detached from their proper place, and streamed
after him as he swam, like the locks of a Rhine-
maiden. It was rather terrible. But such as they
are, they are still glossy raven black : there is not
the smallest hint of grey anywhere about them.

136

THE GRIZZLY KITTENS

Again, once in days of old he had quick
staccato little movements of his head, like some
young wild animal, which suited the swiftness
of his mercurial gambollings very well ; to this
day that particular habit has persisted, but the
effect of it somehow is dismally changed ; it
is galvanic and vaguely suggests St. Vitus's
abominable dance. He still jumps about with
joy when he is pleased, but those skippings re-
semble rather the antics of a marionette than
coltish friskings. He feels young, at least he
has that quenchless appetite for pleasure that
is characteristic of the young, but he isn't young,
and his tragedy, the role of the grizzly kitten,
stares him in the face. Perhaps he will never
perceive it himself, and go on as usual, slightly
less agile owing to the increasing stiffness of
his venerable joints, until the days of his so-
journing here are ended. Or perhaps he will
see it, and after a rather depressing week or
or two turn into a perfectly charming old man
with a bald head and spectacles and a jolly
laugh.

Mrs. Begum's fate hangs in the balance also.
She has begun to think it rather daring of her
to go larking about with a boy who is easily
young enough to be her son, whereas in the
137

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

days when such manoeuvres were rather daring
she never gave two thoughts to them. She still
likes (or pretends to like) sitting up to the end
of a ball, not in the least realising how appalling
a spectacle she presents in the light of a June
dawn. She can easily be persuaded to tuck up
her skirts and dance the tango or the fox-trot
or whatever it is that engages the attention of
the next generation, and if she wants to, sit
down, she is as likely as not to flop cross-legged
on the floor, or to perch herself on a friend's
knee, with a cigarette in one hand and a glass
of champagne cup in the other, and tell slightly
risky stories, such as amused the partners of
heryouth. But for all her wavings of her wand,
the spell does not work nowadays, and when
poor Babs begins to be naughty, it is kinder of
her friends to go away. Kitten-like she jumps
at the blind-tassel still, but it is weary, heavy
work, and she creaks, she creaks. . . .

But the most degrading exhibition of all is
when Babs and Charlie get together. Then in
order to show, each to each, that time writes
no wrinkles on their azure brows, they give a
miserable display of mature skittishness. They
see which of them can scream loudest, laugh
most, eat most, drink most, romp most, and, in

138

THE GRIZZLY KITTENS

a word, be grizzliest. Their manner of speech
has not changed in the smallest degree in the
lapse of thirty years, and to the young people
about it sounds like some strange and out-
landish tongue such as was current in the reign
of the second George. They are always betray-
ing themselves, too, by whistling * Two Lovely
Black Eyes ' or some ditty belonging to the
dark ages, and to correct themselves pretend
that their mother taught it them when she came
to kiss them good-night in their cribs. They
do not deceive anybody else by their jumpings,
they do not deceive each other, and perhaps
they do not deceive themselves. But it is as if
a curse was on them : they have got to be dewy
and Maylike : if Charlie wants a book from the
far end of the room he runs to get it ; when they
go into dinner together they probably slide
along the parquet floor. He is a little deaf, and
pretending to hear all that is said, makes the
most idiotic replies ; and she is a little blind,
and cannot possibly read the papers without
spectacles, which she altogether refuses to wear.
I f only they had married each other thirty years
ago they would probably have mellowed a little,
or at least could have told each other how ridic-
ulous they were being. As it is, they both have

139

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

to screw themselves up to the key of the time
when they swam the Serpentine together. Poor
dear old frauds, why do they try to wrench
themselves up to concert pitch still ? Such a con-
cert pitch ! such strainings and bat-like squeaks !
It would be so much better to get a little flat
and fluffy, on the grounds of greater comfort to
themselves, not to mention motives of humanity
toothers. For, indeed, they are rather a ghastly
sight, dabbing and squawking at each other on
the sofa, in memory of days long ago. The
young folk only wonder who those ' funny old
buffers' are, and they wonder even more when
the funny old buffers insist on joining in a game
of fives on the billiard-table, and the room re-
sounds with bony noises as their hands hit the
flying ball. But they scream in earnest then,
because it does really hurt them very much.
And then Mr. Begum gets wheeled in in his in-
valid chair with his rugs and his foot-warmers,
and insists on talking to Charlie Gordon when
the game is over (and his hands feel as if they
had been bastinadoed), as if he was really an
elderly man, and can remember the Franco-
German war, which of course he can. But
Charlie, though he stoutly denies the imputa-
tion, feels very uncomfortable, and changes the

140

THE GRIZZLY KITTENS

subject at the earliest opportunity. By this
time Babs will have organised a game of round-
ers or something violent in the garden, in order
to show that she is young too. She is getting
very nut-crackery, and looks tired and haggard,
as indeed she is. But she shouts to her hus-
band, who is much deafer than Charlie, ' Daddy,
darling, we're going to play rounders! Would
you like to come out, or do you think it will be
rather cold for you ? Perhaps you'd be wiser
not to. You won't play, I suppose, Charlie?'

And Charlie, nursing his bruised hands, says,
'Rounders? Bless me, yes. I'm not quite past
rounders yet. Nothing like a good run-about
game to keep you fit.'

It keeps him so fit that he is compelled to have
a good stiff brandy and soda afterwards, to tone
him up for the exertion of having dinner.

Wearily, aching in every limb, they creep
into their respective beds. There seems to be
a pillow-fight going on somewhere at the end of
the passage, with really young voices shrieking,
and the swift pad of light feet. Babs thinks of
joining it, but her fingers fall from the pillow
she has caught up, and she gets into bed instead,
thinking she will be up to anything afteragood
night. And she would be up to anything that
141

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

could decently be required of her, if only she
would not present her grim and dauntless figure
at such excursions. Already Charlie is dropping
into a sleep of utter prostration : he wants to be
in good trim to-morrow. There he lies with his
thin Rhine-maiden hair reposing on his pillow.
But he wakes easily, though slightly deaf, and
at the first rattle of his door-handle when his
valet calls him next morning he will instinctively
gather it up over his poor bald pate.

And they might both be so comfortable and
jolly and suitable. There is a wounding pathos
about them both.

CLIMBERS :
I. THE HORIZONTAL
CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER EIGHT

CLIMBERS:
I. THE HORIZONTAL

THE MOST CASUAL OBSERVER OF

the beauties and uglinesses of Nature will have
observed that in the anatomy of that very com-
mon object, aTree, there are two widely different
classes of branches. The one class grows more
or less straight out from the trunk and after a
horizontal career droops somewhat at the ex-
tremities, the other grows upwards in a perse-
vering and uniform ascent. Such branches when
springing high up on the trunk of the tree form
the very top of the tree.

But though these facts are patent in vegetable
life, and though it is clear that anybody not idiotic
and sufficiently active can climb more or less suc-
cessfully up a tree going higher and higher, and
selecting for his ascent the branches that aspire,
not making a precarious way along the other
class of branch which at the best is horizontal,
and at the worst droops downwards, it seems
there must be greater difficulties in the ascen-
sion of what is known among climbers as the
Tree of Society. For while you may see some of
them climbing steadily higher, and ever mount-
145 K

CLIMBERS

ing till their electro-plated forms are lost amid
the gold of the topmost foliage, and their joyful
monkey-cries mingle and almost are entuned
with the song of the native birds who naturally
make their nest there, you will see other climbers
— the majority in fact — eagerly scrambling for
ever along perfectly horizontal boughs that
never bring them any higher up at all, and event-
ually, depressed by their weight, but bend earth-
wards again. U nlike the happier apes who have
a. flair for altitude and bird-song, these less for-
tunate sisters have only a flair for clinging and
proceeding.

There are of course specimens of these Trees
of Society in every town in England, and speci-
mens of the monkeys who hop about them. But
those are but small trees and the climbers small
apes, and the climbing of these shrubs appears
to present but moderate difficulties. The great
specimen, the one glorious and perfect human
vegetable which grows in England, flourishes
only in the centre of London ; its roots draw
their nutriment from the soil of Middlesex (not
of Surrey), and its top, resonant with birds, soars
high into the ample ether of Mayfair. It is a
regular monkey-puzzle, and swarms with indus-
trious climbers going in every direction, most

146

THE HORIZONTAL

of them, unfortunately, proceeding with infin-
ite toil along horizontal branches, while others
slowly or swiftly make their way upwards. Occa-
sionally, with shrill screamsand impotent clutch-
ings at the trunk, one falls, and the higher the
fall, the more completely dead will he (orshe, par-
ticularly she) be when he reaches the ground.
She may lie, faintly twitching for a minute or
two, while grimacing faces of friends peer down
at her, but even before her twitchings have
ceased they have turned to their businesses
again, for no climber ever has a moment's rest,
and a few ghouls crawl out from the bushes and
bear away the corpse for interment wrapped up
in a winding sheet of the less respectable journals

of the day Let us study the unnatural history

of these curious brightly-coloured creatures a
little more in detail.

Dismissing the metaphor of the trees, we may
say that at one time or another these climbers
have come to London, like Dick Whittington.
Possibly they may always have lived in London,
taking London as a mere geographical expres-
sion, but London, considered as a spiritual (or
unspiritual) entity, has at one time or other in
their lives dawned upon them as ashining and de-
sirable thing, and they have said to themselves,

CLIMBERS

gazing upwards, 'I want; I want.' They have
probably had more than the proverbial half-
crown in their pockets, for climbing is an ex-
pensive job, with all the provisions and guides
and ropes and axes necessary for its accomplish-
ment, and half-a-crown would not go very far.
Unlike Dick Whittington, however, they have
not brought their cat along with them, but they
get their cat, so to speak, when they begin to
climb. In other words, without metaphor, they
hook on to somebody, a pianist, or a duchess,
or a buffoon, or an artist, or a cabinet-minister,
or something striking of some kind, and firmly
clutch it. Eminence of any sort, whether of birth
or of achievement, is naturally a useful aid in
ascensions, while on the other hand the climber's
half-crowns, or her flattery, or her dinners, or her
country-house, perhaps even the climber her-
self, holds attractions for the particular piece of
eminence she has put the hook into. It is her
mascot, her latch-key, her passport — what you
will — and she is wise to cling on to it for dear
life. The mascot may not like it at first, he may
wriggle and struggle, but on no account should
she let go. Probably he gets accustomed to it
quite soon, and does not mind being her electric
light which she turns on when she chooses,and,

148

THE HORIZONTAL

incidentally, pays for quite honestly. The two
begin, in a way, to run each other, in most cases
without scandal or any cause for scandal, and,
mutually sustained, soar upwards together. By
means of her mascot she attracts his friends to
her house, so that he knows that whenever he
goes there he will find congenial spirits and an
excellent dinner, while she, if she is clever (and
no climbers, whether horizontals or perpendic-
ulars, are without wits), finds herself gently
wafted upwards.

She will probably have begun her climb up
the first few feet of the branchless trunk with the
aid of ladders, friends and acquaintances (chiefly
acquaintances) who have introduced her to one
or two desirable folk, her mascot among them,
and have enabled her to lay her slim prehensile
hand on the lowest branches. At this point,
having now a firm hold, so it seems to her, she
will often kick her ladders down, perhaps not
really intending to kick them, but in her spring
upwards doing so almost accidentally. But if
she does, she commits a great stupidity, and it
is almost safe to bet that she will prove a hori-
zontal. For it may easily prove that she will
need those same ladders again a little higher up
the trunk where there is a hiatus in branches,
149

CLIMBERS

and returning for them will find them no longer
there. Theywillnotbelyingproneontheground
as she probably thought (if she gave another
thought to them at all), but they will be some-
where the other side of the tree, out of reach.
She has to coax them back, and it is possible
they will not come for her coaxing. And while
she is pondering she may loose hold of her mas-
cot, who will scramble away. In that case, she
had better jump down at once, and begin (slight-
ly soiled) all over again.

To take a concrete instance, after this gene-
ral introduction (as if, after reading a book about
some curious and interesting animal we went to
the Zoological Gardens to observe its appear-
anceand habits), Mrs. Howard Britten furnishes
agood example of thehorizontal variety. Where
the ' Howard ' came from nobody knew or cared ;
she just took it, and since no one else wanted it,
nothing was said. She had married a genial
solicitor, who from contact with the duskysecrets
of the great, had acquired a liking for their
sunlight, and did not in the least object to being
put in his wife's knapsack. He made a very
large income in his profession, and found that,
though household expenses began to mount
even quicker than his wife, the house in Bromp-

150

THE HORIZONTAL

ton Square became considerably more amusing
when the climbing began. He took no active
part in it, but merely popped his head out of the
knapsack and contentedly admired the enlarged
view. Nor was he the least surprised when at
the end of this particular season, his Molly per-
suaded him to move Mayfairwards, and pur-
chase (the fact that it was a great bargain made
little persuasion necessary) a house in Brook
Street with a ball-room.

Molly Howard -Britten (the hyphen ap-
peared this summer) had chosen for her mascot
a Member of Parliament who had lately entered
the Ark of the Cabinet, and was uncomfortable
at home because his wife had an outrageous
stammer and an inordinate passion for wool-
work. Mr. Harbinger was of course a Conser-
vative, for to the climber that notorious body,
the House of Lords, constitutes a considerable
proportion of the top of the tree, and the House
of Lords is generally supposed to be of the Tory
creed. 1 1 was safer, therefore, as she looked for-
ward to a good deal of their society, to have a
Conservative mascot. She on her side offered
a quick feminine wit to amuse him, a charm-
ing face and manner, and really admirable food.
Mrs. Harbinger came once or twice, bringing

CLIMBERS

her skeins with her, but since she disliked din-
ner-parties as much as she adored worsted, it
soon became common for her husband to dine
with the H o ward- Brittens alone. The H o ward-
Brittens spent a week-end with the Harbingers,
and there Molly easily secured three or four of
his friends to dine with her on the following
Friday week. On this occasion one of them was
going on to a very sumptuous tree-top ball after-
wards, and during dinner she was rung up by the
hostess who, agitated by the extreme inclem-
ency of the night, begged her to bring a guest or
two more along with her. This was luck : Molly
went, and being a remarkably good dancer spent
an evening that proved both agreeable and
profitable. By the end of the season she had
got well placed among the lower branches of the
tree, and, perhaps a shade too soon, since it is
not quite so easy to be a hostess as might be
supposed, took the Brook Street house with the
ball-room.

She spent a rather sleepless August with her
husband at Marienbad, and began to make her
first mistakes. She gave picnics, and being in
too great a hurry to secure a crowd, secured the
crowd, but unfortunately it was the wrong one.
She asked every one to come and see her when

15*

•a; *fruv.v*a.

THE HORIZONTAL

they got back to England, but those who came
were not for the most part the singers in the top
branches., but climbers like herself. This fact
vaguely dawned on her, and she determined to
rectify it when, with the assembling of Parlia-
ment in November, her mascot would be in town
again. She did rectify it, and in the rectification
made things much worse, for she gently dropped
all the people she did not want, and made her-
self a quantity of enemies, not interesting, splen-
did enemies, whose attention it was an honour
to attract,even though that attention wore a hos-
tile aspect, but tiresome, stupid little enemies.
Then a stroke of ill-luck, which was not at all
her fault, befell her, for in January there was a
general election, the Conservatives were turned
out, and worse than that, Mr. Harbinger lost his
seat. H er attempt to make her house a rally ing-
spot for the vanquished party signally failed.

Then she made her second mistake. Politics
having proved a broken reed, she adopted the
dangerous device of pretending to be extremely
intimate with her mascot, alluding to him as
' Bertie,' and if the telephone bell rang excusing
herself by saying that she must see what Bertie
wanted. Had people believed in the intimacy
of this relation, one of two things might have
153

CLIMBERS

happened : she might either have made herself
an object of interest, or (here was the danger),
she might have had a fall. She had not at pre-
sent climbed very high, so she would not have
hurt herself fatally, but neither of these things
happened. Nobody cared, any more than they
cared about her having added Howard and the
hyphen to her name. Thus an unprofitable
spring passed, and, as a matter of fact, she
was beginning to climb out along a horizontal
branch.

With May there came to town the noted
Austrian pianist, HerrGrossesnoise. His fame
had already preceded him from Vienna, and
remembering that she had once seen him at
Marienbad, Molly Howard-Britten wrote to
him boldly and rather splendidly at the Ritz, re-
minding him of their meeting (he had stepped
on her toe and apologised with a magnificent
hat- wave), and begging him to come and dine
any day next week except Thursday, which she
knew was the evening of his first concert. She
wrote — and here her fatal horizontality came
in — on paper with a coronet and another ad-
dress on the top, hoping that she might strike
some streak of snobbism. She had come by this
paper quite honestly, having stayed in the house

154

THE HORIZONTAL

and having taken a sheet or two of the paper
put on the writing-table of her bedroom, ob-
viously for the use of guests. So now she used
it, crossing out the address, and substituting for
it 25A Brook Street, Park Lane. A favourable
answer came, addressed to the Highly Noble
Lady Howard-Britten (for he prided himself
on his English), on which the Highly Noble
scrawled a couple of dozen notes to musical
friends and acquaintances (chiefly acquaint-
ances), asking them to dine on the forthcoming
fatal Friday, which was the day after Herr
Grossesnoise's first recital, to meet the illustri-
ous Austrian.

So far all was prosperous and the climbing
weather stood at 'set fair.' It is true that she
had changed horses in mid-stream, for in inten-
tion she definitely unharnessed poor Mr. Har-
binger, and put the unsuspecting pianist in her
shafts. But the fatal thing about changing
horses in mid-stream is that the coachman usu-
ally puts in a worse horse, which Mrs. Howard-
Britten had not done,since Mr. Harbinger could
not at the present time be considered a horse at
all. Already musical London was interested in
the advent of her new mascot, for he had been
well advertised, and of her twenty- four invita-

155

CLIMBERS

tions, nineteen guests instantly accepted, who
with her husband and the Herr would cause
1 covers to be laid,' as she was determined the
fashionable papers should say, for twenty-two.
Then she settled to have an evening party
afterwards, and though on the couple of hundred
invitations which she sent out she did not de-
finitely state that Herr Grossesnoise was going
to play, she wrote on the cards ' To meet Herr
Grossesnoise.' But when you see a pianist's
name on an 'At Home, 10.30 R.S.V.P.' it is
not unnatural to suppose that he is going to
be a pianist in very deed. Among these two
hundred she asked a fair sprinkling of people
she wanted to know, but at present didn't, and
had a Steinway Grand precariously hoisted
through the window into her drawing-room and
retuned on arrival. But in these arrangements
her potential horizontalitycame out more glar-
ingly than ever, for she took a middle course
which no climber ever should. She was inde-
finite, she did not actually know whether Herr
Grossesnoise would play or not. Either she
ought to have engaged him to play at any fee
within reason, if she meant (as she did mean),
to make a real spring upwards to-night, or she
should not have mentioned the fact that he was

156

THE HORIZONTAL

coming. As it was, every one supposed he would
play, and since his recital the day before had
roused a/ur ore of enthusiasm in the press,almost
all her two hundred evening-party invitations
were accepted. A whole section of Brook Street
was blocked with motor-cars, and several aspir-
ing Americans who found it impossible to get
to their hotel for the present looked in unasked
until the road was clear. But as Mrs. Howard-
Britten knew no more than a high percentage
of her guests by sight, the gratuitous honour
thus done her passed undetected.

The evening was a failure of so thorough
a description as to be almost pathetic. Herr
Grossesnoise played, but not the piano. He
came up from the dining-room, slightly rosy
with port and altogether inflated with his suc-
cess, into the drawing-room, set with row upon
row of small gilt chairs, and proceeded to do
conjur ing-tricks in a curious patois of German,
French, and English. He insisted on people
taking cards from him, and on guessing the
cards they had chosen, pressing them continu-
ally on his hostess and exclaiming, 'That is the
Funf de piques, Lady Howard-Britten.' His
colossal form and his iron will permeated the
room, while he insisted on doing trick after

157

CLIMBERS

trick and pointedly addressing his hostess as
Lady Howard-Britten, till she got almost to
hate the sound of that desired prefix, while all
the time the Steinway Grand yawned for him.
More bitter than that was the fact that he asked
Lady Howard -Britten to play a little slow
music ('You play, hein, miladi?') while he did
the most difficult of his tricks, and there the
poor lady had to sit, when it was he who should
be sitting there, and try to remember 'White
Wings they never grow whiskers/ or some
other waltz of her youth. B y degrees the grow-
ing fury of her guests generated that force of
crowds which no individual can withstand, and
in mass they rose and went downstairs, so that
by half-past eleven the rooms were empty but
for the pianist and his host and hostess. Even
then he would not desist, but went on with his
ridiculous tricks till she could have cried with
fatigue and thwarted ambition.

But no climber sits down over a reverse even
as crushing as this, and Mrs. Howard-Britten
determined to wipe out her failure with a ball.
She got hold of a good cotillion-leader, and gave
him practically carte blanche as regards the pre-
sents, engaged her band, and issued athousand
invitations. When the dancing was at its height

158

THE HORIZONTAL

there were precisely ten couples on the floor,
and every one went home laden like a Christ-
mas tree with expensive spoils.

All that season she was absolutely indefatig-
able: she tried charity, and engaged a fifty-
guinea supper-table at Middlesex House for the
evening party on behalf of Lighthouse-keepers.
She lent her ball-room fora conference on Rou-
manian folk-songs given by the idol of the May-
fair drawing-rooms, and standing by the door
as the audience arrived shook hands with as
many of them as she could. She tried to be
original, had a wigwam erected in the same
room, and hired a troupe of Red Indians from
the White City, who danced and made the
most godless noises on outlandish instruments,
but somehow the originality of the entertain-
ment was swamped in its extreme tediousness.
She tried to be conventional and took a box
at the opera, where twice a week she and two
or three perfectly unknown young men won-
dered who everybody was. She hired a yacht
for the Cowes week and a depopulated grouse-
moor in Sutherlandshire, but for all her exer-
tions she only got a little farther out on the
horizontal branch of the tree she so longed to
climb. Nothing happened : she made no mark
159

CLIMBERS

and only spent money, which, after all, any one
can do, if he is only fortunate enough to have it.
She labours on, faint and rather older, but
pursuing. She is always delighted if any one
proposes himself to lunch or dinner, because,
with the true climber's instinct, she always
thinks it may lead to something. But it is to be
feared that all it leads to is that slight drooping
of the horizontal bough at the end, and not to-
wards the birds that sing among the topmost
branches. She lacked something in her equip-
ment which Nature had not given her, ti\e flair
for the people who matter, the knowledge of
the precise ingredients in the successful bird-
lime. . . . But her husband never regrets the
Brook Street house with the ball-room. He
plays Badminton in it by electric light on his
return from his office.

CLIMBERS :

II. THE PERPENDICULAR

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER NINE
CLIMBERS :

II. THE PERPENDICULAR

IF YOU ARE AN OBSERVANT PER-
son addicted to washing your hands and face,
you can hardly fail to have noticed the legend
' Whitehand ' imprinted on your basin and soap-
dish, and.indeed on every sort of crockery. Prob-
ably, if you thought about it at all, you imagined
that this was a trade-name, alluding to the effect
of washing, but it is not really so at all. Mr.
Whitehand is the kind American gentleman
who supplies so many of us with these articles
of toilet, and as a consequence Mr. Whitehand
is rich if not beyond the feverish dreams of avar-
ice, at any rate, as rich as avarice can possibly
desire to be in its waking moments.

This fortunate gentleman began life as a boy
who swept out a public lavatory in New York,
and this accounts for his turning his attention
to hardware. When he had made this colossal
fortune he set about spending it, though he had
no chance of spending it as quickly as it came in,
and with a view to this bought a large chocolate-
coloured house in Fifth Avenue, a cottage at
Newport, an immense steam-yacht, a complete
train in which to go on his journey s, and ordered a
163

CLIMBERS

few dozen of Raphael's pictures and some Gobe-
lin tapestry. He was never quitecertain whether
Gobelin had painted the pictures and the firm
of Raphael the tapestry, but that did not mat-
ter, since he had them both. He then expected
his wife to get him into the very best New York
society, and enter the charmed circle of the Four
Hundred. She had been his typewriter, and in
a fit of moral weakness, of which he had never
repented, since she suited him extremely well,
he had married her. But whether it was that the
Four Hundred had seen too much of Mr. White-
hand's name on their slop-basins, or whether he
had not bought sufficient Raphaels, they one
and all turned their ivory shoulders on him and
his wife, and banged the door in their faces. As
Mrs. Whitehand had just as keen a desire to
shine among the stars of the amazing city as her
husband, she was naturally much annoyed at her
inability to climb into the firmament, the more
so because she was convinced that with practice
she could become a first-rate climber. She had
the indomitable will and the absolute imper-
viousness to rebuffs that are the birthright of
that agile race, and felt the inward sense of her
royalty in this respect, as might some Princess
over whom a wizard had cast a spell. But some-

164

THE PERPENDICULAR

how, here in New York, she got no practice
in climbing, because she could make no begin-
ning whatever. She could only stand on tiptoe,
which is a very different matter. And when at
the end of her second yearof standingon tiptoe,
Nittie Vandercrump, the acknowledged queen
of Newport, cut her dead for the seventeenth
time, and with her famous scream asked her
friend, Nancy Costersnatch, who all those
strange faces belonged to, Mrs. Whitehand
began to think that New York was impregnable
by direct assault. But in the manner of Benjamin
Disraeli, she vowed that some day she would
attract attention in that assembly, and with N it-
tie Vandercrump's scream ringing in her ears,
sat down to think.

Well, there were other places in the world
besides New York, places where there grew
social trees of far greater antiquity and magni-
ficence, and she settled to climb the London tree.
But she felt that she would get on better there
at first without her husband. He was rather
too fond of telling people what he paid for his
Raphaels and how fast his special train went.
When she had climbed right up among the top-
most branches, she would send for him, and let
a rope down to him, and he might quote as many

165

CLIMBERS

prices as he chose, but she felt with the unerring
instinct of a born climber that he would be in the
way at first, even as he had been in New York.
She talked it over quite amicably with him that
night, while the still air vibrated with the sound
of the band next door and the screams of Nittie,
and he cordially consented to the experiment.
Money ad libitum was to be hers, and it was to
be her business to get somewhere where the
screams of Nittie would be no more to them
than the cries of the milkman inthestreet. He,
meantime, was to amuse himself with the special
train and the Gobelin tapestry and the steam-
yacht, and make himself as comfortable as he
could, while his wife made this broad outflank-
ing movement on New York.

So one May afternoon Sarah Whitehand,
with twenty-two trunks and a couple of maids
and her own indomitable will, arrived at the Ritz
Hotel in Piccadilly, and set about her business.
She dined alone in the restaurant, read the small
paragraphs in the evening paper, and ordered
a box at the opera. She was an insignificant little
personage in the way of physical advantages,
being short, and having a face which owned no
particular features. She had, it is true, two eyes,
a nose and a mouth, for the absence of any of

1 66

THE PERPENDICULAR

them would have made her conspicuous, which
she was not, but there was nothing to be said
about them. They were just there : two of them
greenish, one of them slightly turned up, while
the other was but a hole in her face. She was
not ugly any more than she was pretty ; she was
merely nothing at all ; you did not look twice
at her. But if you had, it might have struck you
that there was something uncommonly shrewd
about the insignificant objects which supplied
the place of features. Also, when she was deter-
mined to do any thing, you would have seen that
she had a chin.

But to-night this face of common objects rose
out of the most wonderful gown in shades of
orange that was ever seen. It was crowned too
inawinkingsplendour of diamonds that shouted
and sang in her sandy-coloured hair, and round
her neck were half-a-dozen rows of marvellous
pearls. While the curtain was up she sat close
to the front of her box with her eyes undeviat-
ingly fixed on the stage, and when the curtain
fell she stood there a minute more, so that the
whole house should get a good view of her. She
did not look about her; she merely stood there,
seemingly unconscious of the opera-glasses that
were turned on her from all quarters of the

CLIMBERS

house. All round, everybody was asking every-
body else who the woman with the diamond
Crystal Palace was, and nobody knew. Nor
did anybody know, not even Mrs. Isaacs, the
fashionable clairvoyante, who exposed a con-
siderable portion of her ample form in the stalls,
that through the mists of the horizon there
faintly shone to-night the star of surpassing
magnitude that was to climb to the very zenith,
and burn there in unwinking splendour.

For the next week Sarah took no direct step
forward, but sat in the Ritz Hotel, or in her box
at the opera, or drove about on shopping er-
rands. Among these latter must be included a
quantity of visits to house-agents, who had in
their hands the letting of furnished houses in
such localities asGrosvenor Square and Brook
Street, and what seemed to interest her more
than the houses themselves was the question
of who was wishing to let them. But she was
in no hurry : she was perfectly well aware that
the first steps were of the utmost importance,
and before she stepped at all, she wanted to
find the largest and strongest stepping-stone
available. The evening usually found heralone
in her opera-box, seemingly absorbed in the pre-
sentation of Russian ballet, and unconscious of

168

THE PERPENDICULAR

the opera-glasses levelled at her. She gave the
opera-glasses something to look at too, for she
never appeared twice in the same gown, but in
a series of last cries, most stimulating to the
observer. One night she wore a sort of bonnet
of ospreys on her head, and again everybody
asked every body else who the Cherokee Indian
was. But again nobody knew, and so they all
supposed that the ospreys were made of cellu-
loid. But they had an uncomfortable idea that
they might be genuine. But if so, who's were
they ? London began to be genuinely intrigued.
After about a week of this, she suddenly
lighted upon exactly what she had been look-
ing for in the books of the house-agents. A cer-
tain new big house in Grosvenor Street, which
externally recalled a fortress made of stoutsand-
bags was to be let by Lord Newgate (marquis
of), the eldest son of the Duke of Bailey. Sarah
had already seen Lady Newgate, a tall, floating
dream of blue eyes, golden hair and child-like
mouth, at the opera, and knew her and her hus-
band to be among the true white nightingales
who sing and play poker at the very top of the
tree she was pining to climb. A less Napoleonic
climber than she might have thought that to
take the Newgates' house was a passport to
169

CLIMBERS

London, but she knew that it would only carry
its cachet among the people who could not really
be of any use to her, namely, that well-dressed
esurient gang of Londoners who find it quite
sufficient to be fed and amused at other people's
expense. Sensible woman that she was,she fully
intended to feed and amuse them, but it was not
they that she was out for : at the best they were
like the stage army which marches in at one door
and out at another, and in and out again. They
were not the principals. You were, of course,
surrounded by people whom you fed and a-
mused, if you were on the climb, just as you were
surrounded by footmen and motor-cars, but she
looked much further than this. She argued,
again correctly, that if such conspicuously mel-
odious songsters as the Newgates wanted to
lettheirhouseduring the very months when they
would naturally be needing it most, they must be
in considerable want of money, and would be
likely to give some valuable equivalent for it.
So, seeing her scheme complete from end to
end, as far as the taking of this house was con-
cerned, she told the slightly astonished agent
that she was willing to take the house for the
next three months or the next six at the price
named, but that she wished to make her ar-

170

THE PERPENDICULAR

rangements with Lady Newgate herself. The
agent, seeing that she was just a wild American,
politely represented to her that this was not the
usual method of doing such business in civilized
places, but she remained adamant.

' If I don't settle it up with the Marchioness
of Newgate/ she said, ' I won't settle it up with
anybody else. Kindly give that message over
your 'phone, please, to the Marchioness, and say
that if she feels disposed to entertain my pro-
posals, I shall be very happy to see her at the
Ritz Hotel this afternoon. And if she don't care
to come, why, I don't care to take her old house.
That's all. You may say that my name is Mrs.
Whitehand, and that my husband's the head of
the firm, which she maybe has heard of.'

Now simple as this procedure appeared, it had
the simplicity of genius about it, not the sim-
plicity of the fool. As far as houses went, she
did not care whether she had Lady Newgate's
house or a house in Newgate. What she was
going for was Lady Newgate. It was possible,
of course, that on receiving this message, Lady
Newgate would simply say, 'What on earth
does she want to see me for ? She can settle it
through the agent.' If that was the case, it was
not likely that Lady N ewgate would be any good
171

CLIMBERS

to her. But it was quite possible that Lady New-
gate might say, ' Hullo : here is the Mrs. White-
hand going about looking for a house, and prob-
ably unchaperoned.' Anyhow there was a
chance of this, and since Sarah Whitehand had
nothing to lose, she took it. For there might be
something togain, and these are the best chances
to take.

N o w the price asked for this fortress of marble
and cedar- wood was an extremely high one, and
the N ewgates would have been perfectly willing
to take about half of the sum named, after a little
genteel and lofty bargaining. Consequently the
prospect of immediately obtaining the full price,
not for three months only, but for six, including
August and September, when an aged caretaker
usually had it for nothing, was irresistibly at-
tractive. Toby Newgate, it is true, momentarily
demurred against his wife's waiting upon the
peremptory Yankee at the Ritz, but she had seen
much further than him with her forget-me-not
coloured eyes. She had seen in fact just as far
as Mrs. Whitehand.

' My dear, it's flyingin the face of Providence
to neglect such a chance/ she said, 'and if she'd
told me to wait at the bottle entrance of the Ele-
phant and Castle I should have gone.'

172

THE PERPENDICULAR

He shuffled about the room a little.

* Don't like your being whistled to by the wife
of the manufacturer of hardware, just for six
months' rent,' he said.

She laughed.

1 My dear Toby, it isn't only six months' rent
that's at stake,' she said. ' I'm not going to be
landlady only, I expect, but godmother.'

'Godmother?'

* Yes, dear, and you godfather to Mr. Hard-
ware, if he is here. But you needn't buy any pre-
sents. Good American godchildren give the
presents themselves.'

Toby had some vague sense of her position,
she only the necessity of his poverty.

1 You mean you 're going to trot them round ? '
he asked.

'Yes, if possible. I think her message means
that. Why else should she want to see me, or
take the house for August and September ? It's
a bribe, a hint, a signal.'

The interview between the two ladies was ex-
tremely satisfactory, as is usually the case when
there is no nonsense about the conversational-
ists, and each of them is willing and even eager to
give exactly what the other wants. The business
of the house was very soon relegated to a firm
173

CLIMBERS

of solicitors, and the godmotherly aspect began
to show through the form of the landlady, as in
some cunning transformation scene, faintly at
first but with increasing distinctness.

'Your first visit to London ? ' asked Madge
Newgate.

'Yes: I've been here but a week, and have
done nothing but hunt around for a house and
go to the opera.'

Instantly Lady Newgate remembered the
solitary and dazzling figure in the box. She, too,
had wondered who the woman in orange and dia-
monds was. Mrs. Whitehand's face had made
no impression whatever on her.

' Ah, then I am sure I saw you there, ' she said.
'We were all wondering who you were. You
must allow me to put some of my friends out of
their suspense by letting them know.1

Mrs. Whitehead laughed.

' I should be very pleased for your friends not
to strain themselves,' she remarked. ' And I'm
in suspense too, as to who your friends are. I
don't know a soul in London.'

This was rather a relief to Madge Newgate.
Sometimes a perfectly impossible tail was at-
tached to these strange Americans, and you had
to encounter the riff-raff of the Western world

174

THE PERPENDICULAR

en masse. She laid her hand on the other's knee.

' My dear, you must get some friends at once/
she said. ' You might dine with us to-night, will
you ? I have two or three people coming.'

This was quite sufficient. Mrs. Whitehand
spoke shortly and to the point.

' I want to be run,' she said.

Madge Newgate was a perfectly honest
woman, and now that all ambiguity had been
cleared away, she explained what she could do
and what she would expect to receive. She could
give Mrs. Whitehand the opportunity of meet-
ing practically any one she wished,and she could
repeat and again repeat that opportunity. She
could bring people to Mrs. Whitehand's house,
and within limits get them to invite her to theirs.
But more than that, she frankly admitted she
could not do.

* I can't make them your friends, ' she said. * I
can only make them your acquaintances. The
other depends on you. You must show yourself
useful or charming or striking in some way, if
you want more than j ust to go to balls and dinner-
parties. Luckily in London we are very hungry,
so that you can always feed people, and very
poor, so that you can always tip people, and very
dull, so that you can always amuse people/

175

CLIMBERS

' I see : I quite see that,' said Mrs. Whitehand.

Madge felt that she understood : that it was
worth while explaining.

' I'm sure you will forgive my plain speaking/
she said, 'but it is never any use being vague.
And there's a lot of luck about it. Sometimes a
very stupid woman "arrives" and a very clever
agreeable one doesn't, and the Lord knows why,
I should be quite American do you know, if I
were you ; Americans are taking well just now.
About — well, why should I beat about the bush?
— about what I am to receive for my trouble. I
imagine you don't want my house in the least
for the three months after July, and I am willing
to take a good deal of trouble for your renting
it then. And when some more rent is due, I
think I had better tell you, hadn't I ? I am not
greedy, I am only very poor.'

Now no climber could possibly have made a
better beginning than this. Sarah Whitehand
could not have chosen a more admirable god-
mother, and though she was lucky in having hit
on precisely the right one, she had shown true
perpendicularity in having gone to the right
class. She had aimed at the best and hit it, and
in the three months that folio wed she continued
to show a discretion that bore out the early pro-

THE PERPENDICULAR

miseofher talents. She neither gave herself airs,
nor was she grovellingly humble, she merely
enjoyed herself enormously, and since of all
social gifts that is the most popular, she rapidly
mounted. She threw herself, with Lady New-
gate's sanction, into artistic circles, and firmly
annexed as her mascot the chief dancer of the
Russian ballet. Unlike poor horizontal Mrs.
Howard-Britten, with her disappointing Herr
Grossesnoise, she made it quite clear that when
she asked a party to meet a bevy of Russian
dancers that party was surely going to see the
bevy dance, which it did quite delightfully under
the stimulus of enormous fees. She did not
waste her quails and champagne on unremun-
erati ve guests, or guests who so far from helping
her would only hinder her, but followed Lady
Newgate's directions precisely as to whom she
should ask, and very good directions they were.
She had other modes of access as well. She
flattered grossly or delicately as the occasion
demanded. When she saw that some one liked
to be drenched in flattery she had bucketsful
of it ready. At other times she confined herself
to telling So-and-so's friends how lovely So-and-
so was looking, or how brilliant So-and-so was.
This method she chiefly adopted to those of
177 M

CLIMBERS

Lady Newgate's friends who had somewhat un-
willingly come to her house, and plentiful appli-
cations of these gratifying assurances usually
had their effect sooner or later, for Sarah White-
hand knew that nobody is insensible to flattery,
if (and here lay the virtue) the proper brand
properly administered was supplied. Some-
times the case required; study : it was no use
conveying to a beautiful woman the flattery of
acknowledging her beauty : you had to find
out something on which she secretly prided her-
self, her tact or her want of tact, her charming
manners or her absence of manners, her toes
or her teeth, and make little hypodermic injec-
tions in the right place. Then again there were
people who in spite of all allurements would have
nothing to do with her. After two or three un-
successful direct assaults, she would attempt
that no more, but, just as she was outflanking
New York by laying siege to London, outflank
those obdurate folk by laying siege to their
friends. She was infinitely patient over these
operations, and nibbled, her way round them,
until they were cut off, and found themselves
devoid of all friends save such as were friends
of the accomplished Sarah. By patience, by
good humour and by her own enjoyment she

178

THE PERPENDICULAR

moved steadily and rapidly upwards on branches
that she gilded beforehand. She often thought
about Nittie Vandercrump screaming away in
New York, and even adopted a modified version
of her yells of pleasure. These she gave vent to
when dull people, who for some reason mattered,
told her long stupid stories, and found that they
had achieved, for the first time in their lives, a
brilliant and startling success.

Naturally she made quantities of mistakes.
Occasionally a man at her table would find in
his neighbour a woman with whom he had not
been on speaking terms for years, or again, she
solemnly introduced Bob Crawley to the wife
he had divorced a year before, and immediately
afterwards to the woman concerning whom his
wife might have divorced him the year before
that. Nor could she at first grasp the fact that
a Duchess perhaps did not matter at all, and
that Mrs. Smith mattered very much, and she
had to drop the Duchess and smooth down Mrs.
Smith. But these were mere childish stumbles,
and having picked herself up she again clung
tightly with one hand to her godmother and
with the other to her mascot, the Russian
dancer.

And all the time while she was so nimbly
179

CLIMBERS

climbing, she and Petropopoloffski were sitting
on a great egg which was to be hatched in the
autumn, when London would be full again for
the session. Russian ballet this year was the
rage to the exclusion of all other rages, and
the great egg was no less than a further six-
weeks season of it, financed and engineered by
Sarah. Not until when late in July the eggwas,
so to speak, announced, did any one, even her
godmother, know that it was she who had laid
it, and she who had Petropopoloffski in her
pocket, and she who had taken the Duke of
Kent's theatre for it, and she who had arranged
to have the dress-circle and pit taken away and
rows of boxes substituted, and she, finally, who
had taken thirty-seven boxes herself, so that
only through her favour could anybody engage
them. It was a great, a brilliant stroke, hazard-
ous perhaps, but then everybody wanted to see
Russian ballet so much that they would not
stick at being indebted to her for their boxes.
But it came off: within a couple of days of the
subscription list being opened, all boxes not
reserved by her had been let, and she began
most cordially to allow applicants to have some
of hers. Very wisely, she gratified no private
spites by refusing them, she only made friends

1 80

THE PERPENDICULAR

by granting them. She kept just two or three
of the best, in case of emergencies.

And so she goes on from height to height.
Mr. Whitehand was duly sent for in the suc-
ceeding spring, and sat entranced for a month,
as in a dream of content, in this Valhalla of the
gods. But he found he could not stand much
of the rarefied air at a time, and so bought a
large place in the country, where in leather
gaiters he feels like an English squire, and has
revolutionized all the sanitary arrangements
of the house. And when Nittie came to London,
as she did during the summer, and screamed a
welcome to her darling Sally, her darling Sally
was very wise about it, and instead of kicking
her down, which she might easily have done,
she gave her a leg-up by asking her to a particu-
larly dazzling dinner-party and being quite kind
to her. She does not see much of her, but always
treats her with the respect and pity due to a
poor relation. There is no more climbing to be
done here, and for a change next autumn she
means to go downstairs to New York and see
how they are all getting on in the kitchen.

THE SPIRITUAL

PASTOR
CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER TEN

THE SPIRITUAL

PASTOR

ST. SEBASTIAN'S CHURCH, SITU-

ated in the centre of Mayfair, is justly famous
for the beauty of its structure, the excellence of
its singing, the splendour of its vestments and
the magnificence of its vicar, Mr. Sandow, who
might well be taken, as far as superb physical
proportions go, to be the show-pupil of his
hardly less illustrious namesake. He is ' Hon.'
and 'Rev.,' but he prefers his letters to be ad-
dressed to him as 'The Rev. the Hon. J. S.
Sandow' instead of 'The Hon. the Rev.,' for,
as he says, the ' Hon. ' is an accident — not, of
course, implying that there was any irregu-
larity about his birth — and that 'the Rev.' is
the more purposeful of his prefixes. To do him
justice, he lives up to this fine pronouncement,
and while, if his brother, Lord Shetland, lunches
with him he is regaled with the simplest of family
meals, he entertains an athletic Bishop who is
a friend of his with the sumptuousness due from
a Rev. to a Prince of the Church, and takes him
down in a motor to Queen's Club, where they
have a delightful game of racquets together.
185

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

His ecclesiastical politics, as exhibited in the
services at St. Sebastian's, are distinctly High.
But they are also Broad, since for those of his
parishioners who prefer it, there is an early
celebration at 8 A.M. conducted by two of his
curates. Matins, sung in plain-song by an ad-
mirable choir, follows at 10 A.M., and this is
usually attended by a packed congregation. By
eleven, in any case, which is the hour for the
sermon, there is not a seat to be had in the
church, for Mr. Sandow invariably preaches
himself, and from Pimlico and the wilds of South
Kensington, from Bayswater and Regent's
Park, eager listeners flock to hear him. This
is no quarter of an hour's oration : he seldom
preaches less than fifty minutes, and often the
large Louis Seize clock below the organ loft,
with its discreetly nude bronze figures of Apollo
and Daphne in the vale of Tempe sprawling
over it, chimes noon on its musical bells before
he has finished. A short pause succeeds the
conclusion of the sermon, and the choir enters
the church again from the vestry in magnificent
procession and panoply of banners, followed by
the clergy in full vestments. Clouds of the most
expensive incense befog the chancel, and if what
is enacted there is not the Mass, it is an un-

186

THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR

commonly good imitation of it.

Mr. Sandow's ecclesiastical doctrines thus
preach themselves, so to speak, in the manner
of this service, and there is little directly doc-
trinal in his sermons. He ranges the religions
of the world, culling flowers from Buddhism,
Mohammedanism, Fire Worship, Christian
Science, and has even been known to find some-
thing totemistic, if not positively sacramental,
in the practice of cannibalism. The first part of
these sermons is always extremely erudite, and
out of his erudition there springs a sort of sunlit
Pantheism. He splits no hairs over it, and does
not insist on any definitely limited meaning
being attached to the word 'immanent '; it satis-
fies him to prove the pervasiveness of Deity. At
other times, instead of rearing'his creed as this
substructure of world-religion, he mines into
the sciences and gives his congregation delight-
ful glimpses into the elements of astronomy,
with amazing figures as to the distance of the
fixed stars. Or he investigates botany, and
Aquilegia rolls off his tongue as sonorously as
Aldebaran. Out of the arts as well, from music,
painting, sculpture he delves his gold, that gold
which he finds so freely distributed throughout
the entire universe. Having got it, he becomes
187

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

the goldsmith, and shows his listeners how to
turn their lives into wondrous images of pure
gold, the gold of the complete consciousness
that there is nothing in this world common or
unclean, or less than Divine. He snaps his
ringers in the face of Satan, and tells him, as if
he was a mere Mrs. Harris, that there is no 'sich
a person/ All is divine, and therefore we must
set about our businesses with joy and exultation.
Not only will sorrow and sighing flee away, but
they actually have fled away : it is impossible
that they should have a place in the world such
as he has already proved the existence of by the
aid of botany or music or cannibalism. Indeed
if it were possible to conceive the existence of
sin, we should, we could only expect to find it
where, by reason of people not realizing the
splendour of those realities, they allow them-
selves to be depressed or gloomy. And (since
the Louis Seize clock has already chimed)
Now.

There is no doubt that this robust joyousness
suits his congregation very well, for most of the
inhabitants of his parish, the owners of nice
houses in Curzon Street and Park Lane and
other comfortably-situated homes, have really
a great deal to be jolly about, and Mr. San-

188

THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR

dow points out their causes for thankfulness in
patches so purple that they almost explode with
richness of colour. Another great theme of his,
when for a Sunday or two he has made hishearers
feel how lucky all mankind is to be born into this
glorious world, is the duty of kindliness and
simplicity. Indeed his collected sermons rather
resemble the collected works of Ouida, who
could write so charmingly about pairs of little
wooden shoes, and with the same pen, make
us swoon with the splendours of Russian prin-
cesses, and the gorgeousness of young guards-
men with their plumes of sunny hair, and their
parties at the Star and Garter hotel where they
throw the half-guinea peaches at the fireflies.*
If joy is the violins in this perfect orchestra of
a world, simplicity and kindliness are, according
to Mr. Sandow, the horns and the trombones.
Crowned heads are of no account to him if ac-
companied by cold hearts, but he has found
(greatly to their credit) that the inhabitants of
splendid houses, and the owners of broad acres
areamongthesimplestand kindliest of mankind,
and he often takes an opportunity to tell them
so, ex cathedra, from his pulpit. And since it is
impossible not to be gratified in hearing a pro-

* A fact.
189

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

fessional testimonial, publicly delivered, to your
merits, his unbounded popularity with his con-
gregation is amply accounted for, and the offer-
tories at St. Sebastian's rain on him, as on some
great male Danae, showers of gold.

At the convenient hour of six, so that devo-
tional exercises should not interfere with tea or
dinner, Vespers are celebrated with extreme
magnificence. The church blazes with lights,
which shine out through clouds of incense, and
the air is sonorous with the splendour and shout
of plain-song. And at eleven (evening dress
optional) is sung Compline. Here Mr. Sandow
makes a wise concession to the more Anglican
section of his flock, and the psalms are sung to
rich chants by Stainer and Havergal and the
Rev. P. Henley, while the hymn is some popu-
lar favourite out of the Ancient and Modern
book. Though evening dress is optional, and
no beggar in rags, should such ever present him-
self, would be turned away, evening dress is the
more general, for many people drop in on their
way home from dinner, and the street is a perfect
queue of motor-cars, as if a smart evening-party
was going on. And then you shall see rows of
brilliant dames in gorgeous gowns and tiaras,
singinglustily, and young men and maidens and

190

THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR

solid substantial fathers all in a row, with their
fat chins rising and falling as they rumble away
at Rev. P. Henley in their throats. For certainly
Mr. Sandow has succeeded in making religion,
or at any rate attendance at Sunday services,
fashionable in his parish : it is the Thing to go
to church, though whether like other fashions,
such as diabolo or jig-saw puzzles, it is a tem-
porary enthusiasm remains to be seen.

On week-days the devotional needs of his
congregation are not so sumptuously attended
to, for Mr. Sandow, certainly as wise as most
children of light, is aware that his flock are very
busy people, and does not care to risk the insti-
tution of a failure. Besides he has very strong
notions of the duty of every man and woman to
do their work in the world, even if, apparently,
their work chiefly consists in the passionate pur-
suit of pleasure. But he likes splendour (as well
as simplicity) in those advantageously situated,
just as he likes splendour in his Sunday services.
He is, too, himself, a very busy man, for since he
makes it his duty to know his flock individually,
and since his flock are that sort of sheep which
gives luncheon and dinner-parties and balls in
great profusion, it follows that he has a great
many invitations to these festivities, and accepts
191

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

as many as he can possibly manage. But he
always practises the observance of fasts, and
never eats meat on Fridays. To make meagre on
Fridays and vigils therefore has become rather
fashionable also, and since most of his enter-
tainers have excellent chefs, Friday, though a
meatless day, is an extremely well-fed one, for
with salmon trout and caviare, and a dish of
asparagus and some truffles, and an ice pudding
and some souffle" of cheese, you can make a very
decent pretence of lunching, especially if par-
ticularly good wines flow fast as a compensation
for this ecclesiastical abstinence. It is a pastime
for hostesses also to exercise the ingenuity of
their chefs in producing dishes, strictly vege-
tarian, in which a subtle combination of herbs
and condiments produces a meaty flavour, and
to observe Mr. Sandow's face when he thinks
he tastes veal. But he is formally assured that
no four-legged or two-legged animal has as much
as walked into the stew-pot, and in consequence,
with many compliments, he asks for a second
helping.

All this endears Mr. Sandow to his people;
they say, ' He is so very human and not the least
like a clergyman.' He would not be pleased
with this expression if it came to his ears, though

192

THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR

if he was told he was not in the least like most
other clergymen there would be no complaint.
For he thinks that the office of a priest is to enter
into the joys and pleasures of those he ministers
to, not only to exact their attendance at church,
and, as he modestly says of himself, 'bore them
stiff' with his interminable sermons, and who
shall say he is wrong? Indeed to see him at a
ball, it is more the other guests that enter into
his pleasures than he into theirs, for he is one of
the best dancers that ever stepped, and there
is a queue of ladies, as at the booking-office of
Victoria Station on a Bank Holiday, waiting to
have a turn with the Terpsichorean vicar. But,
like some modified Cinderella, he keeps early
hours, and vanishes on the stroke of one, in
order to be up in good time in the morning, and
at his work. For in addition to all his parties,
his interviews, his dances, his Sunday services,
his games of racquets, he has a further life of
his own, being a voluminous and widely-read
author.

This literary profession of his is no mere mat-
ter of a parish-magazine, or of letters to the
Guardian about the Eastward position, or the
Spectator about early buttercups, but he pub-
lishes on his own account at least two volumes
193 N

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

every year. Usually those take the form of
essays, written in the second or pair-of- wooden-
shoes manner, and probably each of them con-
tains a greater number of true and edifying
reflections than have ever before appeared be-
tween the covers of a single volume. It is no
disparagement of them to say that they seem to
go on for ever, for so do the waters of a spring,
except in times of such severe drought as is un-
known to the pen of this ready writer. They all
begin in an enticing manner, for Mr. Sandow
tells you how he was walking across the Park
one morning, when he observed two sparrows
quarrelling over a piece of bread that some kind
bystander had thrown them. This naturally
gives rise to reflections as to the distressing
manner in which ill-temper spoils our day. The
kind bystander is, of course, Providence, who
throws quantities of bread, and Mr. Sandow
tells us that it is the truer wisdom not to behave
like silly sparrows and all wrangle over one
piece, but hop cheerfully away, with a blessing,
in the certainty of finding plenty more. Or
again Mr. Sandow describes how he was hurry-
ing to the station to catch a train, fussing himself
with the thought that he would not be in time for
it, and not noticing the limpid blue of the sky and

194

THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR

the white clouds that floated across it. When he
came to the station he found he had still five
minutes to spare and so need not have hurried at
all, but drunk in the gladness of God's spring.
From this lesson, he humbly hopes, he will be
less disposed to fuss in the future, but trust to the
wise hand that guides him. We are not told what
would have been the moral if Mr. Sandow had
missed his train, but then, after all he did not
write about that, and one can only conjecture
that it would have been alesson to him as to how
to wait patiently (picking up edify ing crumbs at
the station) for the next train. Or he sees a
house in process of being pulled down, with gap-
ing wall showing the internal decoration, and
tenderly wonders what sweet private converse
took place in front of the denuded fire-place.
H is vivid imagination pictures charmingscenes:
on one wall on the third story was a paper with
repeated images of Jack and Jill and Red Rid-
ing Hood and Little Miss Muffit, and he con-
jectures that here was the nursery, and the paper
looked down on children at play. But the child-
ren are grownup now; they have outlived their
nursery, as we all do, but instead of regretting
days that are no more we must go on from
strength to strength, till we reach the imperish-

195

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

able house of many mansions which nobody will
ever pull down. At the end of each of these mus-
ings written in the pair-of-wooden-shoes mode
comes apassage of this kind in the second man-
ner, a sudden purple patch about imperishable
houses, or the towers of Beulah, or the dawning
of the everlasting day.

It is just possible that this skeleton-analysis
of Mr. Sandow's works may faintly produce the
impression that there is something a shade
commonplace about them, that they lack the
clarion of romance, of excitement, of distinction
in thought, or whatever it is that we look for
when we read books. And it is idle to deny that
this impression is ill-founded: no flash of blind-
ing revelation ever surprises the reader, nor does
he ever feel that the perusal of them has added
a new element to or presented a fresh aspect of
life; only that here, gracefully expressed, is pre-
cisely what he had always thought. This prob-
ably is the secret of their amazing popularity, for
there is nothingmore pleasing than to find one-
self in complete harmony with one's author.
Anybody might have written them, provided
only he had a fluent pen and an edifying mind.
Mr. Sandow never gave one of his readers, even
the most squeamish and sensitive, the smallest

196

THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR

sense of discomfort or anxiety. H e flows pleas-
antly along, faintly stimulating, and though he
suggests no soul-questionings that could pos-
sibly keep anybody awake o' nights, a very
large number of the public are delighted to read
a little more in the morning. For Mr. Sandow
never fails you ; his fund of mild and pleasant re-
flection is absolutely unending, and if from a
mental point of view the study of his works is
rather like eating jam from a spoon, you can at
least be certain that you will never bite on a stone
and jar your teeth. And if you do not by way of
intellectual provender like eating jam, why, you
need not read Mr. Sandow's books, but those of
somebody else.

4 SING FOR YOUR

DINNER'
CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

'SING FOR YOUR

DINNER'

THAT AMIABLE LITTLE FOWL,

the Piping Bullfinch, has very pretty manners.
If he is a well-bred bird, as most Piping Bull-
finches are (though they come from Germany),
he will, when he sees you approach his cage,
put his head on one side, make two or three
polite little bows, and whistle to you with very
melodious and tuneful flutings. But it is not
entirely his love of melody that inspires him,
for he is rather greedy also (though he comes
from Germany), and perhaps the politeness of
his bows and the tunes that he so pleasantly
pipes, would be considerably curtailed if he
found that he was not generally given, as a
reward for his courtesy, something equally
pleasant to eat. But if he feels that you are will-
ing to supply him with the morsels in which
his rather limited soul delights, he will continue
to bow and pipe to you until he is stuffed. And,
as soon as ever his appetite begins to assert it-
self again (and he is a remarkably steady feeder),
he will resume his bows and his tunes.

Quite a large class of people, the numerical
201

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

majority of which consists of youngish men, may
be most aptly described as Singers for their
Dinner or Piping Bullfinches. Girls and young
women are not of so numerous a company, for
if unmarried they have generally some sort of
home where they are given their dinners, with-
out singing for them, or if married are occu-
pied in their duties as providers to their hus-
bands. But there is a large quantity of young or
youngish unmarried men who,living in bachelor
chambers or flats, find it both more economical
and pleasanter to sing for their dinner than to
eat it less sociably at their own expense at their
clubs or to entertain others, and they are there-
fore prepared to make themselves extremely
agreeable for the price of their food. The bar-
gain is not really very one-sided ; indeed, as
bargains go it is a very tolerably fair one ; for
there are great handfuls of people who, either
from a natural dislike of old friends or for lack
of them, are constantly delighted to see a Piping
Bullfinch or two at their tables. They even go
further than this, and take these neat little birds
to the theatre or the opera (paying of course
for their tickets), and invite them down to week-
ends in the country and to shooting-parties.
Thus their houses are gay with pleasant con-

202

« SING FOR YOUR DINNER '

versation, and the Piping Bullfinches have
better balances at their banks.

Leonard Bashton is among the most amiable
and successful of these birds. He lives in two
pleasant little rooms in a discreet and quiet house
that lies between Mount Street and Oxford
Street, for which he pays an extremely moderate
rent. Exteriorly the street has little to recom-
mend it, for it is narrow and shabby, and at the
back, Number 5, where his rooms are situated
on the first floor, looks out on to mews. These,
a few years ago, would not have been agree-
able neighbours just outside a bedroom window,
but Leonard had the sense to see that with the
incoming of motors there would be fewer horses,
so that before long the disadvantage of having
mews so close to the head of his bed would be
sensibly diminished. Thus, being a young man
of very acute instincts, he procured a yearly
lease of these apartments, with option on his
side to renew, at a very small rental. In this
he has reaped a perfectly honest reward for
his foresightedness, since horses nowadays are
practically extinct animals in these mews, and
similar sets of rooms on each side of him are
let for twice the sum that he pays for his.

He has no profession whatever except that
203

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

of a piping bullfinch, for on attaining the age
of twenty-one he came into a property of ^400
a year, and for the next three years lived with
his widowed mother in a country town, declin-
ing politely but quite firmly (and he is not with-
out considerable force of character on a small
scale), to take up any profession whatever. He
was in every respect (except that of not work-
ing for his living), an excellent son to Mrs.
Bashton, but when his two elder brothers, one
a soldier, the other in the Foreign Office, came
to stop with her, he always made a point of re-
tiring to sea-side lodgings for the period of their
stay, since he objected to their attitude towards
him. But on their departure, he always came
swiftly back again, and continued to be a charm-
ing inmate of Mrs. Bashton's house, entertain-
ing her rather dull friends for her with excellent
good humour, playing bridge at the county club
between tea and dinner, and if the weather was
fine and warm, indulging in a round of golf,
usually on the ladies' links, in the afternoon.
But all this time he was aware that he was in
the chrysalis stage, so to speak, and with a view
to becoming a butterfly before very long, made
a habit (his only indulgence) of reading a large
quantity of those periodicals known as Society

204

< SING FOR YOUR DINNER '

papers, which chronicle the movements and
marriages of the great world. Without know-
ing any of these stars by sight, except when he
had the opportunity of seeing their pictures in
the papers, he thus amassed a great quantity
of information about their more trivial doings,
and advanced his education. In the same way
his assiduity for an hour or two every day at
the bridge-tables in the club, enabled him to
play a very decent game. He never lost his
temper at cards (or indeed at anything else),
nor wrangled with his partner, nor did he lose
his head and make impossible declarations.
These qualities in this feverish, ill-tempered
world caused him to be in general request when
a card-party was in prospect, and also kept him
in pocket-money. He did not win much, but
he averaged, as his note-book of winnings and
losings told him, a steady pound a week. And
as he did not spend much, for he had no ex-
pensive tastes of any sort or kind, he found his
cigarettes and his disbursements at the golf-
club were paid for by his gentle winnings. Sub-
sequently, on his mother's death, he came into
a further ^"200 a year, and after careful calcu-
lation felt himself able, since now board and
lodgings were no longer supplied him gratis,
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THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

to move to London, and by whistling his tunes,
and making his bows, manage to procure for
himself a really nice little cage with gilded wires,
and plenty of food.

He soon anchored himself in the ' ampler
ether' of town. He did not take any steps to
cultivate his brother in the Foreign Office or his
brother's friends, but at once began to establish
a position with such friends of his mother who
had town-houses. He was not in any hurry to
do this, and after he had been asked to tea twice,
but never to any more substantial entertainment
by one of these, he refused his third similar in-
vitation, since perpetually going to tea was
not a sufficiently substantial reward for his bow-
ings and pipings. On the fourth occasion he was
asked to lunch, and being put next a most dis-
agreeable cousin of his hostess's who had come
up to town for the day in order to alter her will,
he made himself so perfectly charming to her
that his hostess, in a spasm of gratitude, asked
him to go to the opera with her the week after.
This he very kindly consented to do, and having
good eyes and an excellent memory was able
to point out to her from the box several of the
mighty ones of the earth, whose portraits he had
seen in picture-papers. He did not exactly say

206

'SING FOR YOUR DINNER'

he knew any of them, but went so far as hinting
as much. ' There is old Lady Birmingham,' he
said, remembering what he had read that morn-
ing. * Look, she has the big tiara on. She gave
a huge party last night with a cotillion. I suppose
you were there, weren't you? No; I couldn't
go. Such a lot on, isn't there, just now ? '

His hostess, Mrs. Theobald, one of those in-
dustrious climbers who are for ever mounting
the stairs which, like the treadmill, bring them
no higher at all, was rather impressed by this.
It was also gratifying to find that Leonard sup-
posed that she had been to Lady Birmingham's
party, which she would have given one if not
both of her fine eyes to have been invited to.
Of course she said that she hadn't been able
to go either, which was perfectly true, since she
hadn't been asked, and enquired who the woman
with the amazing emeralds was. There again
Leonard was lucky, for in the same paper he
had read that Mrs. Cyrus M. Plush had been at
Lady Birmingham's party, wearing her prodi-
gious emeralds, five rows of them and a girdle.
It was exceedingly unlikely that anybody else
had five rows and a girdle, as this new-comer
into the box opposite certainly had, and he re-
plied with great glibness :
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THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

' Oh, Mrs. Cyrus Plush. Just look at her
emeralds. How convenient if you were drink-
ing creme de menthe and spilt it. People would
only think that it was another emerald. I don't
think she's really very good-looking, do you ? '

Everybody has probably experienced the
horror of getting one drop of honey or some
other viscous fluid on to the inside of his cuff.
Though there is only just one drop of it, its
presence spreads until the whole arm seems to
be sticky with it. In such quiet mysterious sort
Leonard began to spread. Mrs. Theobald, the
desire of whose life was to entertain largely,
asked him regularly and constantly to her din-
ner-parties, and her guests extended their in-
vitations to him. He took this set of rooms, of
which mention has been made, and with con-
siderable foresight did them up in the violent
colours which were only just beginning to come
into fashion. 1 1 was no part of his plan to indulge
his new friends with expensive entertainments,
but just now, strawberries being so cheap, he
found it an excellent investment to ask two or
three ladies to tea, and found that four invita-
tions to tea usually brought him in three invita-
tions to dinner, which was a good dividend. To
employ a smart tailor was another necessary out-

208

< SING FOR YOUR DINNER '

lay, and he affected socks of the same colour as
his brilliant tie, and carried a malacca cane with
a top of cloudy amber. But soon, always quick
to perceive the things that really interested him,
he saw that though he was getting on quite
nicely with women, their husbands and brothers
did not seem to think much of him, and he aban-
doned the malacca cane, and took up golf again.
Before long he hit a very happy kind of mean,
and made himself the sort of young man who is
not out of place either in town or in the country.
He had several invitations to country-houses
during the months of August and September,
and when he came back tosettle in London again
in October, he got elected to a club of decent
standing, and may be considered launched. His
keel no longer grated, so to speak, on the sand :
he was afloat in a shallow sea of acquaintances,
with no sort or kind of friend among them.

Leonard was in no way a snob, and did not,
having been launched, want to voyage the deep
seas. H e had not the smallest regard for a Mar-
chioness as such, and his regard was entirely
limited to those who would make him comfort-
able. Naturally, if a Marchioness asked him to
tea, he went, but he did not go on drinking tea
with a Marchioness if that was to be the limit
209 o

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

of her hospitalities. All his respect for money,
similarly, was founded on the basis of what other
people's money would procure for him, and while
he would take a great deal of trouble to secure
a footing in a comfortable house, he would not
raise a little finger to be put in a poky attic in
the mansion of a millionaire. But he remained
assiduous in reading paragraphs about those
who move in the world which is called smart,
because he knew that other people liked to hear
about it, and he continued to give the impres-
sion that he himself frequented exalted circles.
But since he was not himself employed in climb-
ing, he did not drop his early friends, so long as
they put plenty of nice things through the bars
of his cage.

He has no intention at present of marrying,
since even to marry a rich wife would interfere
with his career, and he is certainly incapable of
falling in love with a poor one. I ndeed he neither
falls in love nor pretends to with anybody, not
being'of the type that desires amorous, or even
philandering adventure. The motto of his life is
' Comfort,' and on his ^600 a year, he finds that
warm houses, good cooks, the use of motor-cars,
all the things in fact which supply the wadding
of life and take away its sharp cold angles are

210

' SING FOR YOUR DINNER '

well within his reach. He is an excellent hand-
ler of money, has no debts at all, and last season
even managed to have a stall at the opera two
nights a week. This again proved an excellent
investment, for he often gave it away in remun-
erative quarters, and when he occupied it him-
self,spentall the time between theactsin visiting
the boxes of his friends, and pointing them out
any celebrity who might happen to be present.
Nowadays he knows them all by sight, and so
has less cause to read the Society journals. The
time that he used to give to that he now spends
more healthily in walking swiftly for an hour
every morning round the Serpentine, for he is
beginning to exhibit slight signs of stoutness.
But he hopes with this increase of exercise to
keep at bay the threatened increase of weight.
When he meets another piping bullfinch, he is
dexterous in his cordiality, and by urging him in-
definitely to come to his ' diggings/ often secures
a definite invitation.

Leonard has now been a full-fledged piping
bullfinch for eight years and has arrived at the
age of thirty-four. Since he is not in the least
ashamed of his whole life, there is probably no
one in the world who has less to be ashamed of.
Neither the ten commandments, nor the grand
211

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

text in Galatians which entails twenty-nine dis-
tinct damnations can catch him tripping. He is
uniformly good-natured, hehasneverset himself
to make his way by telling scandalous stories
about other people, he pays his debts, he is per-
fectly honest, almost abstemiously sober, and
the more closely you cross-examine him, the
more spotlessly free from any sort of vice does
he seem to be. Only, if you stand a little way off,
so to speak, and take a general view of him, he
is somehow horrible to look upon, for it would
seem that he has no soul of any kind, either good
or bad. And that, when all is said and done, is
a grave defect : there is nothing there, and it is
just that which is the matter with him. All those
delicious dinners feed a non-existent thing ; all
those nice clothes clothe it ; all his amiable con-
versation reveals it.

His future is depressing to contemplate, for
already he is a man governed no longer by im-
pulse or reason, but by habit. Habit has become
the dominating influence in his life, and at the
age when all men ought to be learning and pos-
sibly preaching, he is only practising his terrible
little doctrine of the piping bullfinch. I f he could
fall in love even with a barmaid that would be
the best that could happen to his immortal soul,

212

< SING FOR YOUR DINNER '

or if, obeying impulse, he could only develop a
craving for drink or indeed a craving for any-
thing, there would still be some sign of vitality
in the withered kernel of that nut of his spiritual
self which was never cracked. 1 1 is always better
to go to the good than to go to the bad, but quite
frankly it is better to go to the bad than to go
nowhere at all. But, as it is, it seems as if only
the frost and the fat were going to congeal more
closely round his atrophied heart. He is a prey
to that worst craving known to mankind, the
craving for being comfortable. Any disreput-
able adventure might save him, for it might
teach him that there are such things as desire
and longing for no matter what. Surely to desire
fire is better than merely to expect a hot- water
bottle in your bed.

But it is to be feared that even at this early
age of thirty-four he is a hopeless case. His
engagement book is filled to repletion, and he
lunches and dines everyiday with pleasant ac-
quaintances, and during the slack months of
London stays with them in their pleasant houses.
He makes 'rounds' of visits; all August and
September, all January and all April he is in
the country, quartered on people whom he does
not care about, and who do not care about him.
213

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

But he is always so pleasant ; he always knows
everybody, and when the men come out of the
dining-room in the evening he always sinks in-
to a chair beside a rather unattractive female,
and converses quite amusingly to her till he is
summoned to the bridge table. Then he always
says he is being 'torn away,' and promises to
tell her the rest of it to-morrow morning. And
the bereaved lady thinks what a nice man Mr.
Bashton is. And so he is.

But as years go on he will get a little lazier
and a little stouter. Gradually he will be rele-
gated to the second line, and the young piping
bullfinches who succeed him will in the chirpi-
ness of their early songs wonder why that 'old
buffer' still assumes the airs of youth. He will
still appear in the smoking-room with the stories
that were once of contemporaneous happen-
ings, and now seem to the young birds tales of
ancient history. By degrees his country visits
will dwindle, for country-houses are so draughty,
and he will sit and snooze in his club, present-
ing the back of an odious bald head to the passer-
by in St. James's Street, as he waits for the
familiar crowd to return to London again after
the Christmas holidays. His contemporaries
will have tall sons and daughters growing up

214

< SING FOR YOUR DINNER'

round them, and he will be familiarly known as
Uncle Leonard, and yet all the time he will
think he is something of a gay young spark yet,
and point out Lady Birmingham's daughter
and Mrs. Cyrus Plush's son to his neighbour at
the opera.

Then some day, if fate is kind, he will have
a fit and die without more ado. Not a single
person in the world will really miss him, for the
very simple reason that there was nobody really
there. He will have touched no heart, he will
have nothing and have produced nothing but
the little songs and bows that younger bull-
finches perform with so much more verve. Some-
body at the club when he no longer takes a
sheaf of newspapers under his arm will say,
'Poor old Bashton: nice old chap! Getting
awfully doddery, wasn't he? Are you going to
see the new play to-night? Hay market, isn't
it?'

THE PRAISERS OF

PAST TIME
CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE PRAISERS OF

PAST TIME

EVER SINCE SOCIETY (WITH A

large S) has been the subject of Gleanings and
Memoirs and Memories and Recollections, the
distinguished authors of these chatty little vol-
umes have been practically unanimous in say-
ing that in their day things were very different,
and such goings-on would not ever have been
allowed then. (They would express itinastate-
lier manner, but that is the meaning they seek
to convey. ) I ncidentally , then, if we may take it
that these strictures accurately represent facts,
we may gather that most of those writers must
be listened to with the deference due to the
elderly(sinceotherwisetheywouldnotbeableto
remember such a very different state of things),
and that they are none of them much pleased
with the way in which People (with a big P)
behave now. This appears to be a constant
phenomenon, for if we delve into social history
of any epoch we find just the same complaints
about the contemporary world, and we are forced
to conclude that, to state the case broadly, uncles
and aunts and grandfathers and grandmothers
219

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

neverapproveofthebehaviouroftheirnephews,
nieces, and grandchildren. At least those who
write about them do not, as they take the gloomi-
est view of them, and are unanimous in declar-
ing that the country is going or has gone to the
dogs.

Now there is a great deal of indulgence to be
granted to these loquacious pessimists, who are
full of a faded sort of spice and are seldom dull.
I ndeed, they should be more indulgent to them-
selves, and oftener remember that it is but reas-
onable that they should have lost the elasticity
of youth, and the powers of enjoyment that no
doubt were once theirs, the failure of which
leads them to contrast so sadly (and peevishly)
the days that are with the days that are no more.
But they in their time caused a great deal of
head-shaking and uplifting of horror-stricken
hands on the part of their elders, and, remember-
ing how little notice they ever took of those
antique mutterings, they would be kinder to
themselves and to others if they put their ink-
bottles away, and looked op. at the abandoned
revellers who take no great notice of them as
comfortably as possible, instead of sitting up to
all hours of the night composing liverish reflec-
tions about the wickedness of the young men

220

THE PRAISERS OF PAST TIME

and women of the day. It is a waste of good
vitriol to throw it about like that, and it is really
wiser to wipe the hot ink from the pen before
and not after writing, as one of our most indus-
trious social castigators did not so long ago,
' There is not an ounce of manliness in the
country.' For contradiction of so Bedlamitish
a sentiment the myriad graves in France and
Flanders bear a testimony that is the more elo-
quent for its being unspoken.

The truth is that every age finds a great deal
to condemn in the manners and customs that
differentiate the rising generation from its own.
But that does not prove that the elders are right :
if it proves anything it proves that they are too
old to take in new ideas, and so had better con-
fine their remarks to the old ones, on which they
are possibly competent to speak. For in their
view, if we take the collective wisdom of the
moralists of Mayfair, the country is not now for
the first time going to the dogs, but has always
been going to the dogs. 1 1 has never done any-
thing else, and yet it has not quite arrived at the
dogs yet. But the cats appear to have got it.

There has always been, since man became a
gregarious animal, a vague affair called Society.
Nobody knows precisely what it is except that
221

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

when the gregariousness of man attained suf-
ficient dimensions it happened, and the older
generation disapproved of it. The more elderly
specimens of cave-men without a shadow of
doubt deplored the manner in which the younger
gnawed their mutton-bones, and regretted the
days when all well-regulated cave-boys and
cave-girls always wiped their greasy fingers not
on their new woad as they now do, but on their
hair. Society used to be society then, and only
the well-mannered could get into it. And it is
in precisely the same tone that the modern mor-
alists croon or croak their laments beside the
waters of the modern Babylon. The present
praisers of past time bewail with an acidity that
betokens suppressed gout that their nephews
and nieces have lost all decency in speech, and
actually make public the fact that one or other
of them has had appendicitis. And Uncle can-
not bear it ! Have appendicitis if you must, but
for the sake of Society pretend that it was a sore
throat unusually low down. At all costs Uncle's
Victorian sensibilities must be spared, or he
will go straight home and embark on Chapter
IX. of his Recollections, called the ' Moral De-
pravity of Modern Society.' But is it too late
for him to remember how once the Queen of

222

THE PRAISERS OF PAST TIME

Spain caught fire, and was badly burned because
nobody could allude to the awful fact that she
had 1-gs ? The elderly ladies-in-waiting would
have died rather than have done so, and there-
fore the Royal L-gs were much injured by the

flame. But perhaps Uncle would like that Or

again our truculent admonishers remind us that
Society was once a very small and esoteric body.
Nobody but the de Veres really counted, just as
if the de Veres prehistorically came down from
heaven with the Ark of Society in their posses-
sion and thereupon started it. But nobody really
started it ; the de Veres did not as a matter of
fact say, ' Let there be Society/ and there was
Society. Once the de Veres themselves were
parvenus : when they began to enter the charmed
circle they too were accounted nobodies, and the
ante -de Veres wondered who Those People
were. It was but gradually that the mists of
antiquity clothed their august forms, until, as
from the cloud on Sinai, they looked down on
the post-de Veres, and mumbled together at the
degeneration of that which had once been so
select and is now so Verabund.

The great central Aunt Sally at which the
memorio-maniacs hurl theirdarts most viciously
is a thing they call Smart Society, or the Smart
223

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

Set. For generations they have done so, and the
poor Aunt Sally ought to have been battered
to bits long ago, for they throw their missiles
straight at her face from point-blank range.
Only, by some process not rightly understood
by her assailants, she appears perfectly imper-
vious to their attack and proceeds on her god-
less way as brightly as ever. She is also, as we
shall see, largely an invention of those who so
strenuously denounce her. What started the
loquacious pessimist perhaps was that he found
there were a good many nephews and nieces who
enjoyed themselves very tolerably, and began
to find him and his tedious stories about what
the best people did in the age of Henry II. or
Charles I. or William IV. (according to the
epoch which he remembers best) rather tire-
some, and did not listen to him with due atten-
tion. That may or may not have set him going,
but the fact that there exists in London a quan-
tity of rich people who like to entertain their
friends (among whom the loquacious pessimist
would scorn to number himself) fills him with
ungovernable fury, and with a pen that blisters
the paper, he describes how they spend their
Sunday.

Breakfast, if we may believe him, goes on

224

THE PRAISERS OF PAST TIME

from ten till twelve, lunch (a substantial dinner)
is prolonged with liqueurs and cigars till close
on tea-time, when sandwiches and even 'bleed-
ing woodcocks ' are provided. Dinner is not till
nine, and so late an hour finds everybody hungry
again. Then, forgetting that he has told us that
eating goes on the whole day, he informs us in
another attack on poor Aunt Sally that these
same people spend Sunday in riding and driving
and going out to tea ten miles away, and career-
ing about on a ' troop ' of bicycles. Yet again,
forgetting that here his text is the sinful extra-
vagance of the present day, he informs us how
stately were the good old times, when a rich man
kept as many servants as he could afford and
'sailed along1 in a coach and four, instead of
going (as he does in these shambling, undigni-
fied days) in the twopenny tube After all, the

economy effected by using the twopenny tube
instead of the coach and four would enable you to
buy an occasional ' bleeding woodcock ' for your
friends, and yet not be so extravagant as your
good, stately, simple old grandfather. Or, when
they speak of modern shooting-parties these
chroniclers allude to the mounds of 'crushed
pheasants 'that are subsequently sent to be sold
at the poulterer's, and speak of the hand-reared
225 p

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

birds that almost perch on the barrels of their
murderers. 1 1 would be interesting to place one
of these moralists at a modern pheasant-shoot,
when the birds rocket above the tree-tops, and
see how large a mound of crushed pheasants he
mowed down, and how many hand-reared birds
came and sat on his gun before he slaughtered
them. Such descriptions as these are rank
nonsense, the work of outsiders who, while be-
traying a desolate ignorance of what they are
talking about, betray also, in ignorance, an un-
amiable desire to scold somebody.

Now every one has his own notion of what
Society (with a big S) is, and most people mean
different things. Guileless snobs read the small
paragraphs in the paper, and think they are
learning about it. Others walk in the Park and
are sure they see it : the suburbs think that it is
the sort of circle in which their pet actor habit-
ually moves : South Kensington thinks it is in
Park Lane, or the private view of the Academy,
or at a garden-party. I n point of fact it is, if any-
where, everywhere, and the only thing that can
certainly be stated about it is that those who
think about it at all, think that it is just a little
way ahead, and thus declare themselves to be
snobs or ineffectual climbers. But those who

226

THE PRAISERS OF PAST TIME

really make Society are not those who think
about it, but Are it, just because they live the
life in which their birth and their circumstances
have placed them, with simplicity of mind and
enjoyment. Society does not live in a spasm
of social efforts, it lives perfectly naturally and
without self-consciousness. It is impossible to
make anything of your environment if you are
always wishing to be somewhere else, and you
will make nothing of any environment at all,
unless you are at ease there. Indeed the big S
of Society is really the invention of the snobbish
folk who are not friends with their surroundings,
and that in part, at any rate, is why the loquacious
pessimist is so unrelenting towards it.

Society, then, and in especial Smart Society,
as it exists in the minds of the praisers of past
time and of snobs, is a perennial phantom, which
is the chief reason why none of them can be
forced or can succeed in getting into it. As they
conceive of it, it is no more than a Will o' the
Wisp, which, if they pursue it, merely leads
them on through miry ways to find themselves
in the end pursuing nothing at all, and hope-
lessly bogged in the marshes of their own imag-
ination. That society exists all the world over
is, luckily, perfectly true, but this peculiar and
227

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

odious conception of it is the invention of those
who want to get into it and of those who fulmi-
nate against it. Indeed it is almost allowable
to wonder whether these two classes are not
really one, for it is impossible to acquit some of
its bitterest enemies of a certain hint of envy
in their outpourings, a grain of curiosity in their
commination services.

The pity of it is that they will not rest from
these strivings, or realize that what they pur-
sue (either with longings or vituperation) exists
only in their own excited brains. Each has his
feverish dream : one pictures a heavenly Salem
of dukes and duchesses, another a swimming
bath full of champagne and paved with orto-
lans, another an Elysium where infinite bridge
consumes the night, and continual changing of
your dress the day. These conditions have no
existence ; they are Wills o' the Wisp. There
does not exist in the world a Smarter Set (to
retain the beloved old snobbism) than a circle
of friends who, with definite aims of their own,
and tastes that are not copied from other people,
enjoy themselves and are at ease with each
other, not being snobs on the one hand or
grousers on the other. All other ideas of Smart
Sets, whether in London or Manchester or

228

THE PRAISERS OF PAST TIME

the Fiji Islands, are mere moonshine : the only
Smart Set that ever existed or ever will exist
is that of uncensorious and simple people who
have the sense to appreciate the blessings they
so richly enjoy. Of these Smart Sets there are
many, but they are not the Smart Sets or the
capital-lettered Society that are usually meant
when allusion is made to them.

But somehow the notion of the existence ot
'A Smart Set' or Society with a big S is so
deep-rooted that it will be well to examine the
evidence for its existence before labelling it
'Bad Meat,' to be destroyed by the Board of
Moral Health. The evidence in favour of its
existence (if they insist on it) is derivable from
three possible sources :

(i.) First-hand evidence of those who have
witnessed or partaken in these ungodly orgies.

(ii.) Report.

(iii.) Reporters.

Now the purveyors of the intelligence, those
who distribute it, are largely the praisers of
past time, who so persistently attack it and paint
such lurid pictures of its Neronism. But they
must have got their information from some-
where (unless we are reluctantly compelled to
suppose they made it up) and they can have
229

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

got it from no other sources than those speci-
fied above.

But on their own fervent asseverations they
have never so much as set foot in these Med-
menham Abbeys, and if their information is de-
rived directly from the Abbeys, it must have
been conveyed either by the revellers them-
selves, by their valets and ladies' maids, or have
grown out of the Tranby Croft trial. It is un-
likely that the revellers should have recounted
the story of their shame to those sleuth-hounds
on the trail of decadence, and if we rule out the
Tranby Croft trial as not covering all that the
sleuth-hounds say about Smart Life, we must
conclude that theymusthaveinduced(no doubt
with suitable remuneration) the gentleman's
gentleman and the lady's lady to say what their
owners did and when they went to bed. But not
for a moment can we believe that these distin-
guished scribes resorted to such a trick. The
statement of the proposition shows how incred-
ible it is, for these high-minded moralists simply
couldnot have applied for the knowledge of 'sich
goings on' from chattering servants.

First-hand evidence, then, being ruled out,
the purveyors may have derived their inform-
ation from report. H ere the baffled aspirants to

230

THE PRAISERS OF PAST TIME

the social distinction of being Smart may have
helped them. But still such knowledge if worth
anything must be based on something, and if
on report it is merely the more valueless for
having gone through so many mouths.

We are left then with thequestion of evidence
derived from reporters, and here I think we
touch the source of the appalling state of things
pictured by the loquacious pessimist. The de-
lightful anonymous author of the Londoner's
Log-book has grouped the organs of those who
chronicle social happenings under the title of
Classy Cuttings, and it is from these columns
that we must conclude that the praisers of past
time derive their awful information. It is they
who give to the thirsty public the details of the
menu of the supper that followed the dance, and
hint how great were the losings of a certain
Countess who lives not a hundred miles from
B-lgr-v- Sq-r-, whensheplayedpokeratSt-1-n-.
But, does that sort of information carry the re-
quired conviction? Indeed it only carries con-
viction of the lamb-like credulity of the person
who believes it. Once upon a time an eminent
and excellent lady revealed to a horrified audi-
ence that the Smart Set habitually drank what
she called 'White Cup' at tea (sensation). It
231

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

sounded thoroughly Neronian, but lost its im-
pressiveness when the further revelation was
made that at a tennis-party certain individuals
had been so lost to all sense of decency as
to partake of hock and soda instead of tea and
cream.

1 1 is on such foundations, columned by Classy
Cuttings, that the praisers of past time build the
Old Bailey, where, bewigged and berobed, they
so solemnly pronounce the extreme sentence on
Smart Sets and Society. We must not deny to
their summing-up something of the gorgeously
Oriental vocabulary of Ouida, though we can-
not allow them much share in her wit. She told
in the guise of fiction the sort of thing which the
praisers of past time — after consulting Classy
Cuttings — expect us to accept as facts ; she and
Classy Cuttings mixed the effervescent bever-
age which they allow to get flat, and then label it
the beef-tea of Fact. And when we are offered
these fantastic imaginings and are assured that
the lurid pictures are positively photographic
in their accuracy, all our pleasure, as readers, is
gone, and we expire with a few hollow yawns.
We had hoped it was Ouida, but to our unspeak-
able dismay we are told that it is all Too True.
Not being able to swallow that, we can but re-

232

THE PRAISERS OF PAST TIME

member the story of Dr. Johnson and the hot
potato.

Tempera mutantur, and unless we change
with them we shall never grasp the true values
of the marching years. Society (with a final curse
on the large S) changes, and the changes repre-
sent on the whole the opinion of people who are
on the right lines. The praisers of past time
have cried 'Wolf* too often with regard to the
decadence they invariably detect in the present
time, and until we are more certain that at last
the wolf is really there, it is wiser to push along
than to trust in the denunciations of those who,
firmly immured in thesedan-chairsof sixty years
ago, squint through the chinks of their lowered
blinds (lowered, lest they behold vanity) at the
crowd they do not know, and the bustle that they
altogether fail to understand. I n their day they
kicked up their heels much higher than their
grandmammas approved. They disregarded
the denunciations of their elders then, and they
must not be surprised if the younger generation,
whose antics their creaking joints and croaking
minds are unable to imitate, think of them as
antique and peevish progenitors now. The arts
of fifty years ago are doubtless theirs, all except
the art of gracefully retiring. I nstead, the more

233

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

accomplished of them, since their loquacity no
longer can hold an audience, proceed to volumes
of uncomprehending memoirs. As long as they
stick to the past, their recollections often possess
an old-world fragrance as of lavender-bags shut
in disused Victorian wardrobes, but when they
come to the present the lavender-scent fades,and
they reek of brimstone and burning. A grand-
mamma, talking of past days, is a delightful and
adorable member of any circle, but when she
laments the dangerous speed at which trains go
nowadays, every one younger than she feels she
does not quite understand. And if, getting her
information from fiction (as the praisers of past
days do from the columns of Classy Cuttings),
she tells us that motors habitually run over a
hundred thousand people a day in the streets of
London, the younger folk, with the kindness
characteristic of youth, merely shout in her ear-
trumpet, 'Yes, Grandma, isn't it awful?' and
wonder when her maid will fetch her to go to bed.
It is on Grandma's data that the praisers of
past time form their notions of society. She
prides herself on never having been in one of
those horrible automobiles : the praisers pride
themselves on never having set foot within the
doors of these unspeakable temples. Apparently

234

THE PRAISERS OF PAST TIME

it is for this reason that they can tell us with pre-
cision what happens there, except when they
forget what they have previously written, and
flatly contradict themselves. Like the Fat Boy,
the loquacious pessimist wants to make our flesh
creep, and sepulchrally announces that he saw
Miss Wardle and Mr. Tupman ' a-kissing and
a-hugging.' But unlike the Fat Boy, who really
saw it, the pessimist has only ' heard tell of it '
in Classy Cuttings, and with Wardle we should
exclaim, 'Pooh, he must have been dreaming.'
So he was, all alone one night when nobody had
asked himouttodinner, and falling into a reverie
proceeded to contrast the Sancta Simplicitas of
the days when everybody sailed along in a coach
and four with those extravagant times when he
has to pay for his own mutton-chop, and rich
folk save their money to go in the twopenny
tube. This sounded a little illogical, but it would
do, and refreshing himself with another drink
of Classy Cuttings, he lashed out at the poker-
party at St-l-n-, by way of punishing those who
were not his hosts on that terrible occasion. Of
course he would not have gone in any case, since
he has never and will never set foot in those
restaurants (not homes) of vice and extrava-
gance. One cannot help wondering whether,
235

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

if he condescended to go there, he would not
feel a little kinder after ortolans and a bleeding
woodcock for tea, and with greater indulgence to
the degeneration he deplores, write a few pages
about Progress instead of D ecadence. But who
knows? The ortolans might disagree with him,
and he would become unkinder than ever.
Possibly all is for the best.

BOOKS TO ENTERTAIN

THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR

By E. F. BENSON, author of "Dodo," &c. <S^c. Illustrated by
GEORGE PLANK. Crown 8vo, 288 pages, buckram gilt, 55. net.

From the titles here given of a few chapters of this popular author's new volume,
it will be at once adjudged what immense enjoyment Mr, E. F. Benson's latest
work will afford in dealing with the Freaks of Mayfair. We have here in that
author's inimitably amusing style, full-length studies of such personages as
readers have found in his other popular works and which ability of writing so
entertainingly has made his a unique place among our best writers of to-day.
Some of these subjects are " The Compleat Snobs," " Aunt Georgie," " The
Sea-Green Incorruptible," "The Eternally Uncompromised," "Climbers,"
" The Spiritual Pastor," etc. It is expected that THE FREAKS OF MAY-
FAIR will attain equal success with Ian Hay's uniform volume.

By the Author of
"THE FIRST HUNDRED THOUSAND"

New large Impression of

THE LIGHTER SIDE OF SCHOOL LIFE

By IAN HAY. Illustrated in colour from pastel drawings by
LEWIS BAUMER. Extra Crown 8vo, 288 pages. 53. net.

" It is a book to chuckle over." — Sphere.
" The best picture of public-school life that has ever been written." — Standard.

LEGAL AND OTHER LYRICS

By GEORGE OUTRAM. Fifteen full-page illustrations reproduced
by photogravure from drawings by EDMUND J. SULLIVAN. Crown

8vo, buckram, 288 pages. 55. net.

The re-issue of this well-known and now scarce volume of amusing legal wit
and humour will be welcome alike to all lawyers and most laymen. Advan-
tage has been taken in this edition to make additions from the author's MSS.
hitherto unpublished and to restore several pieces to their original rendering
as first printed by the author.

GREY OLD GARDENS SERIES

A series of beautifully illustrated books intended for all who have

felt the " romantic suggestiveness " of an old garden. Decorative

boards, by JESSIE M. KING. Square 8vo, 200 pages. 35. 6d. net.

CORNERS OF GREY OLD GARDENS. A selection of

essays expressive of the "antique" charm of gardens, with eight

illustrations in colour by MARGARET A. WATERFIELD.

A BOOK OF OLD SUNDIALS & THEIR JVTOTTOES.

A selection of nearly 350 inscriptions from old sundials, along

with forty-two illustrations.

T • N • FOULIS - PUBLISHER

PRESENTATION VOLUMES

OLD TIME ROMANCE SERIES

A finely illustrated and richly illuminated series of volumes deal-
ing with Old Time Romance and Story. Fcap. 8vo, 320 pages,
55. net ; in Leather, 75. 6d. net.

I. LITTLE FLOWERS OF ST. FRANCIS. Translated from

the Italian and edited by HENRY EDWARD, Cardinal Manning.

With eight illustrations in colour by F. CAYLEY ROBINSON, and

richly decorated boards.

LAVENGRO

THE SCHOLAR, THE GYPSY, THE PRIEST

By GEORGE BORROW. The Life and Character of the Gypsy.

Twelve full-page illustrations in colour by EDMUND J. SULLIVAN.

Extra Crown 8vo, 620 pages, Buckram, 55. net. In Persian Yapp

Leather, 75. 6d. net.

MODERN MUSICIANS

A Book for Players, Singers, and Listeners. By J. CUTHBERT
HADDEN. Containing twenty-one portraits. Crown 8vo, 250
pages, Buckram, 35. 6d. net. Yapp Leather, 55. net.

Here is a companion volume to the authors -very successful work, entitled
" Master Musicians." And whereas the latter dealt exclusively with the
dead classics of the art, from Bach to Brahms, this deals exclusively with
living artists : not with composers only, as in the former book, but also with
singers, pianists, violinists, and conductors. A II the great living names are
represented, and the material collected, at first hand, is fresh, and presented
in "popular," literary style.

THE ROSE GARDEN SERIES

A series of volumes containing illuminated pages reproduced from

old Persian manuscripts and illustrations in colour. Fcap. I2mo.

In richly decorated boards, 55. net. Yapp Leather, 75. 6d. net.

In Vellum, IDS. 6d. net.

I. THE ROSE GARDEN OF PERSIA. By LOUISA STUART
COSTELLO. An Anthology of the chief Persian Poets. Illustrated

in colour by FRED GARDNER. 234 pages.

II. RUBAlYAT OF OMAR KHAYYAM. Containing full
notes and glossary by N. H. DOLE. Ten illuminated pages and

eight illustrations in colour by FRANK BRANGWYN, R. A.

T • N • FOULIS • PUBLISHER

SOME ENGLISH BOOKS

THE ENGLISH CHARACTER

By SPENCER LEIGH HUGHES, M. P. , Sub-Rosa of fat Daily News
and Leader. Although his pen has probably covered more pages
than Balzac's, this is the first time Sub- Rosa has really " turned au-
thor." The charm and penetration of the result suggest that his
readers will never allow him to turn back again. He is a born
essayist, but he has, in addition, the breadth and generosity that
journalism alone can give a man. The combination gives a kind of
golden gossip — criticism without acrimony, fooling without folly.
The work contains sixteen pictures in colour of English types by
Frederick Gardner. 300 pp. Buckram, 5/- net. Leather, 7/6 net.

ENGLISH COUNTRY LIFE

By WALTER RAYMOND. Mr Raymond is our modern Gilbert
White ; and many of the chapters have a thread of whimsical
drama and delicious humour which will remind the reader of * ' The
Window in Thrums." It is a book of happiness and peace. It is as
fragrant as lavender or new-mown hay, and as wholesome as curds
andcream. With sixteen illustrations in colour by Wilfrid Ball, R.E.
462 pp. Buckram, 5/- net. Leather, 7/6 net.

ENGLISH LIFE 6f CHARACTER

By MARY MITFORD. Done with a delicate Dutch fidelity, these
little prose pastorals of Miss Mitford's would live were they purely
imaginary — so perfect is their finish, so tender and joyous their
touch. But they have, in addition, the virtue of being entirely
faithful pictures of English village life as it was at the time they
were written. With sixteen illustrations in colour by Stanhope
Forbes, R. A. 350 pp. Buckram, 5/- net. Leather, 7/6 net.

THE RIVER OF LONDON

By HILAIRE BELLOC. Everybody who has read the "Path to
Rome" will learn with gladness that Mr Hilaire Belloc has written
another book in the same sunny temper, dealing with the oldest
highway in Britain. It is a subject that brings into play all those
high faculties which make Mr Belloc the most genuine man of
letters now alive. The record of the journey makes one of the most
exhilarating books of our time, and the series of Mr Muirhead's
sixteen pictures painted for this book sets the glittering river itself
flowing swiftly past before the eye. 200 pp. Buckram, 5/- net
Leather, 7/6 net

T • N • FOULIS • PUBLISHER

BOOKS TO ENTERTAIN

THE LIGHTER SIDE OF IRISH JLIFE

By GEORGE A. BIRMINGHAM. Its title suggests unbridled jocular-
ity— and it is in fact full of inimitable fun ; but there is a basis of
solid thought and sympathy to all the mirth. While replenishing
the common stock of Irish stories, Mr Birmingham adjusts our con-
ception of the race. Mr Kerr's sixteen illustrations in colour form
a gallery of genre studies, sympathetic and yet sincere, that allows
us to look with our own eyes upon Ireland as she really is to-day.
288 pp. Buckram, 5/- net. Velvet Persian, 7/6 net.

IRISH LIFE &? CHARACTER

By Mrs S. C. HALL. ' « Tales of Irish Life " will remind the reader
more of Lever or Sam Lover than of ' ' Lavengro. " It is effervescent
and audacious, ringing with all the fun of the fair, and spiced with
the constant presence of a vivacious and irresistible personality.
The sixteen illustrations by Erskine Nicol are in precisely the same
vein, matching Mrs Hall's sketches so manifestly that it is strange
they have never been united before. To look at them is to laugh.
330 pp. Buckram, 5/- net. Velvet Persian, 7/6 net.

LORDCOCKBURN'S MEMORIALS

" This volume," says The Saturday Review, "is one of the most
entertaining books a reader could lay his hands on." ' ' The book,"
says The Edinburgh Review ', "is one of the pleasantest fireside
volumes that has ever been published." Cockburn's pen could tell
a tale as well as his tongue, and to read this book is to sit, unob-
served, at that immortal Round Table, with anecdote and reminis-
cence in full tide. With twelve portraits in colour by Sir Henry
Raeburn, and other illustrations. Extra Crown 8vo. 480 pp.
Buckram, 6/- net.

AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF CARLYLE

of INVERESK (1722-1805), edited by J. HILL BURTON. "He
was the grandest demi-god I ever saw," wrote Sir Walter Scott
of the author of this book. But, as these Memoirs show, he was a
demi-god with a very human heart, — or, at any rate, a "divine"
with a thorough knowledge of the world. It was probably these
qualities that made him such a prominent figure in his day, and it is
certainly these that give his Recollections their unique importance
and raciness. They provide ' ' by far the most vivid picture of Scot-
tish life and manners that has been given to the world since Scott's
day." This edition has been equipped with a series of thirty-six
portraits reproduced in photogravure of the chief personages who
move in its pages. 612 pp. Buckram, 6/- net.

T- N • FOULIS • PUBLISHE

PR 6003 .E66 F7 1916
SMC

Benson , E. F. (Edward
Frederic), 1867-1940.
The freaks of Mayfair /

AVY-4998 (mcsk)

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